Tandem column for the simultaneous determination of arginine, ibuprofen and related impurities by liquid chromatography.

Ibuprofen arginate is a rapidly absorbed salt designed to promote more rapid onset of analgesia than commercially available forms of ibuprofen. Ibuprofen and arginine have very different polarities and this becomes in a chromatographic problem, further complicated with the determination of related compounds, which is necessary in stability assays of the pharmaceutical forms. The common solution is the employment of two separate methods, but this is time consuming. A LC method has been developed to determinate both compounds and related impurities in one run. Ibuprofen, arginine and three ibuprofen related impurities (B, E and J) have been baseline separated with isocratic conditions at pH 3.0 and run time under 20 min by employing a tandem combination of two different stationary phases: first a ZORBAX SB-C18 column from Agilent (250 mm x 4.6 mm and 5 microm) and downstream a SUPELCOSIL LC-NH2 column from Supelco (150 mm x 4.6 mm and 3 microm). The octadecyldiisobutylsilane column provides the separation of ibuprofen and its impurities by a hydrophobic mechanism, whereas aminopropyl column offers selective retention of arginine by dipolar interaction mechanism. Method has been successfully validated following ICH guidelines and it has been demonstrated to be reliable for arginine, ibuprofen and related impurities determination in sachets of two different dosages as pharmaceutical forms. Moreover, stress test has proved the selectivity of the method for degradation products, such as those that can emerge throughout long-term stability assays.