Development and Validation of RP-HPLC Method for the Determination of Hydrochlorothiazide in Bulk Drug and Pharmaceutical Dosage Form

18 Zorbax (Eclipse Plus, 4.6 × 250mm, 5μm) was tested showing no big difference in the method results. The method was validated giving good precision (RSD% < 1), acceptable linearity (R ≥ 0.9978), and low LOD and LOQ (0.5 and 1.7 μg/mL, resp.) on both columns. Successful application on pharmaceutical dosage tablet form gave high recovery of 99.93%. The method was compared with official BP and other reported methods. The proposed method is economic, simple, and rapid and hence can be employed for routine analysis in quality control laboratories.


Introduction
Hydrochlorothiazide chemical name is 2H-1,2,4-Benzothiadiazine-7-sulfonamide,6-chloro3,4-dihydro-,1,1-dioxide (Figure 1).It is slightly soluble in water and sparingly soluble in acetonitrile.Hydrochlorothiazide belongs to a class of drugs called thiazide diuretics antihypertensive [1].Hydrochlorothiazide binds to and inhibits the enzyme carbonic anhydrase.It is frequently used alone or in combination with other medications for the treatment of hypertension, congestive heart failure, symptomatic edema, diabetes insipidus, renal tubular acidosis, hypoparathyroidism, and edema and prevention of kidney stones and used in the treatment of osteoporosis [2].
An extensive literature survey was carried out and found that there are few analytical methods for the determination of hydrochlorothiazide alone or in its combination with other drugs in pharmaceutical preparations including spectrophotometry [3,4], flow injection [5], TLC [6], and HPLC [7][8][9].A recent study involved a review of developing methods using these analytical techniques for estimation of hydrochlorothiazide in various biological samples with focus on sample pretreatment methods and separation methods [10].
In this study, an attempt was made to develop new HPLC method for hydrochlorothiazide estimation in bulk and pharmaceutical formulation with good precision, accuracy, linearity, and reproducibility using two columns C 18 Inertsil5 ODS-3 and C 18 Zorbax Eclipse Plus.
Nowadays, HPLC columns packed with a stationary phase of C 18 -bonded silica are produced by many manufactures in different parts of the world for the separation of many organic compounds.C 18 columns from different manufacturers, but with the same bonded phase, may provide different separation selectivity for many separation components [11].Even differences between columns provided by the same manufacturers have been reported [12].Inertsil (ODS-3 250 mm × 4.6 mm, 5 m siloxane), and a Flexar/S275/S200EP Photo Diode Array Detector coupled with chromera5 version 3.4.0.5712 software.Flexar column oven was connected with a system to control the column temperature.Column of Zorbax5 Eclipse Plus (4.6 × 250 mm, 5 m) was used as well.

Chemicals.
Pharmaceutically pure sample of HCTZ drug was obtained from Awamedica Company (in Erbil city, Kurdistan region of Iraq).Commercial tablet of HCTZ (100 mg) was procured from the local drug market.Acetonitrile and water were HPLC from merck KGaA, 64271 Darmstadt, Germany.

Preparation the Mobile Phase.
The mobile phase of HPLC analysis was prepared from organic solvent of acetonitrile and water (v : v%) (50%, 60%, and 70% of ACN).The mobile phase was degassed using an ultrasonic bath (100 W, 80 KHz, Elmasonic P, Germany.).

Stock and Working Solutions.
Stock solution of 1000 g/mL of HCTZ was prepared by dissolving 0.1 g of sample in 100 mL of acetonitrile.This stock standard solution was stored in a refrigerator and used to prepare the working solutions at different concentrations.

Sample Solution Preparation.
Ten tablets were crushed to fine powder.An accurately weighed portion of the powder (equivalent to 20 g/mL) was taken and dissolved in 100 mL of acetonitrile.

Determination of Maximum Absorption of HCTZ.
A UV-Visible Double beam Spectrophotometer (200-700 nm, Lambda 25, Perkin Elmer, USA) was used to measure the wavelength ( max ) at maximum absorbance for HCTZ in acetonitrile in the range 200-400 nm analysing 10 g/mL standard solution of HCTZ.

The Effect of Different Strengths of the Mobile Phase.
To construct a basic background for developing an HPLC method with fast analysis for the determination of HCTZ, the effect of the different concentrations of the mobile phase was investigated.Isocratic elution run was employed by analysing solution of 10 g/mL at different strengths of the mobile phase (50%, 60%, and 70% (v/v)) of ACN.The chromatographic conditions were set using a 20 L injection volume, flow rate of 1.0 mL/min, column oven at ambient temperature (30 ∘ C), and UV detection at a wavelength of 272 nm.

The Effect of Injection
Volume.The effect of injection volume was examined as parameter that may affect peak elution during method development.Three injection volumes were tested including 10, 20, and 30 L using solution of 10 g/mL at 50% ACN mobile phase.

The Effect of Column
Temperature.Three different temperatures of 40 ∘ C, 35 ∘ C, and ambient temperature (30 ∘ C) were tested to study the effect of the column oven temperature analysing 10 g/mL of HCTZ at 50% ACN mobile phase.

The Effect of Different Columns.
The effect of the different column brands on the optimization of HCTZ peak was investigated using two columns C 18 Inertsil ODS-3 (4.6 × 250 mm, 5 m) and C 18 Zorbax Eclipse Plus (4.6 × 250 mm, 5 m).

Method Validation 2.5.1. Assessment of the Precision of Method.
The precision of the HPLC analytical method was estimated by repeated injections ( = 5) of 5 g/mL solution of HCTZ using two columns (C 18 Inertsil column and C 18 Zorbax column) calculating relative standard deviation (RSD%) of the peak area of HCTZ on each column.

Linearity Assessment.
Linearity of the calibration curve was determined at two ranges (2-10 and 10-30 g/mL) preparing five different concentrations at each range.Linearity was determined using two columns (C 18 Inertsil and C 18 Zorbax columns).Aliquots of these solutions (20 L) were injected into the analytical HPLC system and the detector response (peak area) was plotted against the nominated concentration to generate the calibration curve.Using Excel5 software, from the regression line, the coefficient of determination ( 2 ) was obtained to statistically assess the linear relationship.

Limit of Detection and Limit of Quantification.
The limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantification (LOQ) of HCTZ in solution were calculated using two columns based on the data from the lower range of the calibration curve [13].The calibration curve at low levels of HCTZ was used to statistically estimate the HCTZ peak area, which was significantly different from the blank peak area.The equation used to estimate this peak area was where   is the blank peak area and   is the standard deviation of the blank peak area.In practice, the value of   and   can be estimated from the calibration graph at the lower range by using values from the regression analysis of variance.Therefore, the value of   was replaced by the intercept value of the regression equation of the calibration graph of HCTZ at the lower range of 2-10 g/mL.Similarly, the term   was replaced by the residual standard deviation, which is the square root of the error mean square.Both terms were estimated using the regression function in Excel software.The statistical data consist of the intercept, slope, and standard deviation of the regression line (SD); after calculating the LOD and the LOQ peak area depending on the above information of the regression line, the LOD and the LOQ were determined according to the following equations: (2) 2.5.4.Application of the Method to Dosage Form.The accuracy of proposed method was ascertained on the basis of average recovery % to determine HCTZ in its pharmaceutical preparation as tablets (equivalent to 20 g/mL) by triplicate injections under the same chromatographic conditions of the proposed method.The recovery was calculated according to the following:

Determination of Maximum Absorption of HCTZ.
In HPLC-UV methods, selecting a wavelength that is not close to the  max of the studied compound can produce low sensitivity and nonlinearity measurements of response.Therefore, all the measurements should be determined at the  max of the studied compound to obtain a high response for its peak.Using solution of HCTZ prepared in acetonitrile solvent showed strong UV absorbance at the optimum wavelength of 272.07 nm as shown in Figure 2. Reviewing the literature, the obtained wavelength is confirmed in different studies [4,[14][15][16].

Development and Optimization of the HPLC Method.
The basic chromatographic conditions were selected after testing different parameters that influence the HPLC analysis of HCTZ, such as the strength of mobile phase, injection volume, column temperature, and different column manufactures, as follows.

The Effect of Different Strengths of the Mobile Phase.
Under isocratic chromatographic conditions using mobile phase of mixture ACN and H 2 O and Inertsil column (ODS-3 250 mm × 4.6 mm, 5 m siloxane), different ratios (50%, 60%, and 70% ACN) were tested.The HPLC chromatograms in Figure 3 show the analysis of 10 g/mL solution of HCTZ at different strengths of the mobile phase.The results presented in Figure 3 and Table 1 show good shape of eluted peak of HCTZ at all concentrations of the mobile phase and no disturbance in the baseline is observable along the chromatographic record.A little decreasing in retention time and increasing of peak area of HCTZ occur within increasing of mobile phase (50%, 60%, and 70%) of ACN.
From economic point of view, to avoid waste of ACN solvent, 50% of ACN was selected as concentration of the mobile phase in this method with approximately 3.5 min retention time of HTCZ peak and 5 min chromatographic runtime.Taking into account that the column hold-up is about 2.5 mL for these columns (25 × 0.46 cm), so it is advisable to use the weakest eluent.

The Effect of Injection
Volume.Three injection volumes of 10, 20, and 30 L were examined through injecting 10 g/mL of HCTZ.The results shown in Table 2 indicated that the retention time shows small decreasing and the peak area increases with the increase of the injection volume.Injecting a very large volume, the column can be overloaded, which will lead to peak broadening, most often peak fronting, or, in some cases, peak tailing [17,18].This problem limits the injection volume to less than 25 L for columns with 0.46 cm internal diameter [11].In this study, the autosampler was set up for a 20 L injection volume to overcome the probability of peak distortion.

The Effect of Column
Temperature.The effect of column temperature was studied testing three different temperatures: 30 (ambient), 35, and 40 ∘ C. The results show that there was no big effect on eluted peak of HCTZ showing nearly close retention times (∼3.5 min) and peak areas.Therefore, column oven was set at ambient temperature (30 ∘ C) in this study.4 shows the chromatograms of injection solution of 10 g/mL of HCTZ on the two columns; under the HPLC conditions they showed a little difference in   values.As shown in Figure 4, a narrow and symmetrical peak was obtained on both columns but with a small decreasing in the retention time with little decreasing in the peak area of HCTZ using tested column of Zorbax compared with Inertsil column.A possible explanation for this might be due to the age of the column; Inertsil column is used from long time compared with Zorbax column.

Method of Validation.
Validation of the analytical method prior to determining HCTZ in dosage sample was done by examining such parameters of precision, linearity, and LOD and LOQ using two columns as follows.

Assessment of the Precision of Analytical Method.
Repeatability of the method was checked by replicate injections of 5 g/mL of the solution for five times on the same day as intraday precision study of HCTZ using two columns.%RSD values were found to be 0.53 and 0.62 on the Inertsil and Zorbax columns, respectively, indicating a good precision of the HPLC method.

Linearity of the Calibration
Curve.Linearity of the calibration curve was determined at two ranges of concentrations (2.0-10 and 10-30 g/mL) of HCTZ using two columns.The values of coefficient of determination ( 2 ) were found to be

LOD and LOQ Determination.
The LOD and LOQ were determined for the analytical method using two columns by the statistical data of calibration curve at low level of the concentrations.The results obtained showed values of LOD and LOQ of 0.5 and 1.7 g/mL, respectively, and these values are close for both columns.

Application of the Method to Dosage
Form.The proposed method was applied successfully for the determination of the HCTZ drug in its pharmaceutical dosage.This application was done using Inertsil column.The recovery calculated was equal to 99.93% with RSD% of 0.89 ( = 3) indicating that the proposed method is applicable for the determination of HCTZ in pharmaceutical dosage form.

Comparison with Other Methods.
In reviewing the literature, the present method for the determination of HCTZ was compared with other methods as shown in Table 3.Under the chromatographic conditions applied in the present method using a new Perkin Elmer HPLC system coupled with PDA detector, the proposed method shows short retention time and run time with high recovery of HCTZ.

Conclusion
An RP-HPLC method coupled with PDA detector was developed and validated for the determination of HCTZ in bulk drug and pharmaceutical dosage form.The selected chromatographic conditions were 50 : 50 acetonitrile : water as a mobile phase, C 18 Inertsil ODS-3 column (4.6 × 250 mm, 5 m), and 20 L injection volumes with flow rate of 1 mL/min applied at ambient temperature (30 ∘ C) and 272 nm wavelength.Testing another column of C 18 Zorbax (Eclipse Plus, 4.6 × 250 mm, 5 m), which has same type of stationary phase of siloxane as C 18 Inertsil but with different manufacture, shows no big difference in the method results.Validation parameters indicated a good precision and linearity with low values of LOD and LOQ (approximately 0.5 and 1.5 g/mL, resp.).The application of the proposed method on pharmaceutical dosage of tablet gave recovery of 99.93%.The proposed method is economic, simple, and rapid and hence can be employed for routine analysis in quality control laboratories.
acceptable ≥0.9978 showing good linearity over the ranges studied of the assay method on both columns.

Table 1 :
The effect of different mobile phase strengths on the peak area and retention time of HCTZ.

Table 2 :
Effect of injection volume on peak area and retention time of HCTZ peak.

Table 3 :
Comparison among the proposed method and other HPLC methods in the literature applied to HCTZ.