Determination of prednisolone and the most important associated compounds in ocular and cutaneous pharmaceutical preparations by micellar electrokinetic capillary chromatography

A micellar electrokinetic capillary chromatographic method to separate prednisolone, prednisolone acetate, naphazoline, Zn–bacitracin, sulfacetamide and phenylefrine is described. The separation was carried out by using a fused-silica capillary (57 cm×75 μm I.D.) at 25 °C and 30 kV, using a 5 mM phosphate–5 mM borate buffer adjusted to pH 8.2, 50 mM sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) and 10% methanol–water (v/v) as background electrolyte. Under these conditions, the run time was 8 min and the limits of quantification were about 1.0 mg/l for every component. The method was applied to pharmaceutical preparations and the results provided recoveries close to 100% and the method gave good results when compared with a reference multivariate calibration spectrophotometric method.