Method development and validation for the simultaneous determination of meloxicam and pridinol mesylate using RP-HPLC and its application in drug formulations

A simple and reliable reversed-phase high-perfomance liquid chromatographic method has been developed and validated for the simultaneous determination of meloxicam and pridinol mesylate in their synthetic mixtures and combined tablet formulations. Both drugs were separated on a 250 mm × 4.6 mm C18 column packed with 5 μm particles. The mobile phase, optimized through an experimental design, was a 51:9:40 (v/v/v) mixture of methanol, isopropanol and 50 mM potassium phosphate buffer (pH 5.9), pumped at a flow rate of 1.0 ml min−1. UV detection was performed at 225 nm. The method was validated in the sample concentration ranges of 33.7–61.8 mg l−1 for meloxicam and 8.8–16.8 mg l−1 for pridinol mesylate, where it demonstrated good linearity with r = 0.9989 and 0.9987 (n = 15), respectively. The assay was shown to be repeatable at concentration levels of 70%, 100% and 130%, with relative standard deviation values of 1.09% and 0.82% for meloxicam and pridinol, respectively. For independent 100% level samples, the intra-day precision was 0.4% and 1.0% while the intermediate precision was 0.7% and 1.0% for the drugs. The method demonstrated to be robust, resisting to small deliberate changes in pH, flow rate and composition (organic:aqueous ratio) of the mobile phase. The LOD values were 0.22 and 0.20 mg l−1, while the LOQ were 1.7 and 1.1 mg l−1, for meloxicam and pridinol, respectively. The applicability of the method was demonstrated by determining the drug content of two commercial pharmaceutical formulations, where it exhibited good performance.