Simultaneous determination of pioglitazone and glimepiride in bulk drug and pharmaceutical dosage form by RP-HPLC method.

A simple, fast, and precise reverse phase, isocratic HPLC method was developed for the separation and quantification of pioglitazone and glimepiride in bulk drug and pharmaceutical dosage form. The quantification was carried out using Inertsil ODS (250 +/- 4.6 mm, 5 micro) column and mobile phase comprised of acetonitrile and ammonium acetate (pH 4.5; 20mM) in proportion of 60:40 (v/v). The flow rate was 1.0 ml/min and the effluent was monitored at 230 nm. The retention time of pioglitazone and glimepiride were 7.0+/-0.1 and 10.2+/-0.1 min respectively. The method was validated in terms of linearity, precision, accuracy, and specificity, limit of detection and limit of quantitation. Linearity of pioglitazone and glimepiride were in the range of 2.0 to 200.0 microg/ ml and 0.5-50microg/ ml respectively. The percentage recoveries of both the drugs were 99.85% and 102.06% for pioglitazone and glimepiride respectively from the tablet formulation. The proposed method is suitable for simultaneous determination of pioglitazone and glimepiride in pharmaceutical dosage form and bulk drug.