Validated Stability-Indicating HPLC-DAD Determination of the Antihypertensive Binary Mixture of Carvedilol and Hydrochlorothiazide in Tablet Dosage Forms

A simple and selective HPLC with diode array detection stability-indicating method was developed for the simultaneous determination of the antihypertensive drugs carvedilol (CRV) and hydrochlorothiazide (HCT) in their combined formulations. Effective chromatographic separation was achieved using Zorbax SB-C8 column (4.6 x 250 mm, 5 mu m) with gradient elution of the mobile phase composed of 0.025 M phosphoric acid and acetonitrile at a flow rate of 1 mL min(-1). The multiple wavelength detector was set at 242 nm for measurement of CRV and 271 nm for HCT. Quantification was based on measuring the peak areas. The cited drugs were resolved with retention times 4.9 and 6.7 min for HCT and CRV, respectively. Analytical performance of the proposed HPLC procedure was thoroughly validated with respect to system suitability, linearity, ranges, precision, accuracy, specificity, robustness, detection and quantification limits. The linearity ranges were 5-300 and 5-200 mu g mL(-1) for CRV and HCT, respectively, with correlation coefficients > 0.9996. Both drugs were subjected to stress conditions of acidic and alkaline hydrolysis, oxidation, photolysis and thermal degradation. The proposed method proved to be stability-indicating by resolution of the drugs from their forced degradation products. Moreover, specificity of the method was verified by resolution of both drugs from more than 20 pharmaceutical compounds of various medicinal categories. The validated HPLC method was applied to the analysis of the cited antihypertensive drugs in their combined tablet dosage forms. The proposed method made use of DAD as a tool for peak identity and purity confirmation.