LC-DAD Determination of Calcium Channel Blockers by Using an Experimental Design Approach

A high-performance liquid chromatographic method with diode array detection has been developed for the determination of five 1,4-dihydropyridines: amlodipine, nitrendipine, felodipine, lacidipine and lercanidipine. A fractional design and a central composite design were used. The factors considered in the optimisation process were: percentage of organic modifier, pH of the aqueous buffer, buffer concentration and temperature. The chromatographic separation was performed using a Supelcosil LC-ABZ+Plus C18 column. An optimised mobile phase of acetonitrile-water (70:30, v/v), containing 10 mM CH3COOH-CH3COONa pH 5 at a flow rate of 1 mL min−1 was used. The temperature was set at 30 ± 2 °C. The photometic detection was carried out at 237 nm. The method was applied to the determination of these compounds at μg mL−1 concentration levels, obtaining intraday repeatabilities values lower than 5% in terms of relative standard deviations, accuracies higher than 98% and detection limits ranged from 0.03 (felodipine) to 0.35 μg mL−1 (lacidipine). The chromatographic method allowed the analysis of the drugs in their pharmaceutical formulations with a total elution time of 12 min.