Direct injection, column switching–liquid chromatographic technique for the estimation of rabeprazole in bioequivalence study

A rapid, simple and sensitive high-performance liquid chromatography–ultra violet (HPLC–UV) method with column switching between sample pre-treatment column and analytical column was developed for the quantitation of rabeprazole in human plasma; on a Bio-Sample Analysis system (Co-sense® for BA) from Shimadzu Corporation, Kyoto, Japan. Zaleplon was used as an internal standard. The method was validated as per USFDA guidelines for the concentration range of 20.0–1200.0 ng/mL and the correlation coefficient were found to be better than 0.999. Recovery of rabeprazole as well as the internal standard from human plasma was more than 90.0%. Rabeprazole was stable in human plasma for 4 months at −70 ± 5 °C and for 20.0 h at ambient temperature. In the auto sampler, the drug was stable for 24.0 h at 4 °C. The method was specific as there were no interfering peaks in the human plasma eluting at the retention times of the rabeprazole and the internal standard. The frozen plasma samples containing rabeprazole were stable to three freeze thaw cycles. The bioanalytical method was rugged in terms of inter- and intra-day accuracy and precision. The method was simple, specific, sensitive, precise, accurate and suitable for bioequivalence and pharmacokinetic studies. It was successfully applied to the pilot bioequivalence study of 20 mg rabeprazole tablet of German Remedies Ltd. (A division of Cadila Healthcare Ltd.), India versus Pariet tablet of Eisai Ltd. & Janssen-Cilag Ltd., Japan in male human subjects.