Determination of ibuprofen in combined dosage forms and cream by direct UV spectrophotometry after solid-phase extraction.

Solid-phase extraction method followed by direct UV spectrophotometry at 264 nm was developed and applied for the selective ibuprofen determination in two-component formulation of ibuprofen and pseudoephedrine-HCl, combined powder which contains ibuprofen in the form of salt with L-arginine and 10% ibuprofen cream. Procedures for ibuprofen determination in complex pharmaceutical preparations by direct UV spectrophotometry lack selectivity because of interferences of other active substances and fat components. A limited number of spectrophotometric methods applicable to these samples are based on derivative (first and second-order) UV spectroscopy. Common HPLC procedures are more selective but more expensive and for creams also require some type of extraction because the large amount of oily excipients would clog up the column. The proposed solid-phase extraction method proved to be suitable for analysis of ibuprofen in combined tablets, powders and creams by direct UV spectrophotometry. Also the method provides an effective clean-up of the cream and allows ibuprofen determination by HPLC analysis. For the extraction three different commercial sorbents were tested: anion exchange Oasis MAX, hydrophilic-lipophilic balanced Oasis HLB and reverse-phase Chromabond C18ec. The optimization of the SPE method was first done on standard ibuprofen solutions and then the suitability of the method was checked on solutions of commercial pharmaceutical samples. The method yields good results for all three types of commercial preparations on the anion-exchange Oasis MAX cartridges, with recoveries of 90-100.2%. The interferences in UV analysis were not registered and good precision (RSD < 6%) was obtained. The present method has been verified as accurate as the reference HPLC with the great advantage of less expensive instrumentation. For this reason, the method would be suitable for a routine and rapid drug quality control.