UPLC-PDA: A greener miniaturized tool for the analysis and purity assessment of ebastine and phenylephrine hydrochloride

• Published in: Microchemical journal 2020-12, Vol.159, p.105400, Article 105400
• Main Authors: Abd El-Rahman, Mohamed K., Fawaz, Esraa, Abdel-Moety, Ezzat M., Al-Alamein, Amal M. Abou
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Ebastine; Eco-scale; HPLC; Phenylephrine; Purity assessment; UPLC
• ISSN: 0026-265X
• DOI: 10.1016/j.microc.2020.105400

•UPLC is a promising sustainable miniaturized alternative to HPLC in drugs’ analysis and impurity profiling purposes.•The first UPLC-method developed for the analysis and purity assessment of ebastine and phenylephrine in their combined tablets.•UPLC could be utilized as a more ecofriendly analytical methodology.•Application of Eco-Scale green metric tool for objective evaluation of the greenness of the proposed UPLC and the reported HPLC method. Recent improvements in miniaturization of the existing technologies, nevertheless analytical instruments have acquired worldwide acceptance and encouragement. The replacement of traditional analytical procedures by miniaturized alternatives has become inevitable to promote more ecologically benign techniques. The dominance of HPLC technique during the past decades is noticeable in the fields that deal with drugs’ analysis and quality control despite the provoked environmental concerns about it. Thus, the development of a miniaturized HPLC that retains the practicality and versatility of the conventional HPLC technique, whereas it is greener, has been a long thought after goal for the analysts. Lately, UPLC has been developed as a unique analytical approach that utilizes the chemistry of small particles to meet the need for a miniaturized HPLC methodology. Employing a smaller sized stationary phase that can withstand high pressure, UPLC leads to a substantial reduction in time, labor, waste, and cost of materials required to get results compared to traditional HPLC columns. In this contribution, a UPLC method was adopted for the first time for the analysis and purity assessment of a binary mixture of ebastine (EBS) and phenylephrine hydrochloride (PHE) formulated in Ebast DC® tablets. The proposed UPLC method was applied successfully to the determination of the investigated drugs over a linearity range of 1–50 µg/mL, with LODs equal to 0.31 µg/mL and 0.33 µg/mL for EBS and PHE, respectively. To evaluate the greenness of the developed UPLC methodology; the Eco-Scale semi-quantitative green metric tool was employed in a side-by-side comparison with the reported HPLC method to conclude whether UPLC provides a greener and more efficient technique or not.