Determination of Paroxetine in Pharmaceutical Preparations Using HPLC with Electrochemical Detection

Abstract

A reliable and sensitive high performance liquid chromatographic method for the determination of widely prescribed antidepressant has been developed. Paroxetine is a potent selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor used for the treatment of depression and various mood disorders. The optimum mobile phase was prepared using a combination of 40% acetonitrile and phosphate buffer 0.01 M to pH 3 and running under isocratic mode at a flow rate of 1.0 ml/min. with electrochemical detection at 0.9V. The applicability of the developed method is in the field of quality control as well as for monitoring the level of drug at various concentrations during synthesis of the parent drug. The suggested methodology was validated following the guidelines of the FDA in terms of: sensitivity (LOD and LOQ, 0.005 and 0.01 ng/mL, respectively), linearity between 0.5 - 50 ng/mL (r2 > 0.9999), inter- and intraday precision (< 0.259% and < 0.538%), robustness (less than 5.0%) and recovery (99.7 - 100.7%). The developed method is specific, rapid (less than 10 min), precise, reliable, accurate, cheap and suitable for routine analysis for the determination of paroxetine in pharmaceutical preparations.