Validation of RP-HPLC method and stress degradation for the combination of metformin HCl, atorvastatin calcium and glimepiride: application to nanoparticles.

A stability-indicating high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) procedure was developed for the determination of metformin HCl (MTH), atorvastatin calcium (AC) and glimepiride (GP) in combination and their main degradation products. The separation and quantization were achieved on a 5-µm Qualisil gold, C18 column (4.6 mm × 250 mm). The mobile phase selected was phosphate buffer (pH 2.9)-organic phase in proportion of 70:30. Organic phase consisted of methanol-acetonitrile (90:10) at a flow rate of 1 mL/min and detection of analytes was carried out at 230 nm. The method exhibited good linearity over the range of 10-60 µg/mL for MTH, 2-20 µg/mL for AC and 5-30 µg/mL for GP. Square of the correlation coefficients was found to be >0.999. Various stress degradation studies were carried out in combination as per International Conference of Harmonization (ICH) guidelines for 4 h. The recovery and precision were determined in terms of intraday and interday precisions and expressed as relative standard deviations. These were <1 and <2%, respectively. Finally, the applicability of the method was evaluated in nanoparticle analysis of MTH, AC and GP as well as in stability studies of nanoformulation.