Simultaneous High Performance Liquid Chromatographic Analysis of Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Oxicams in Pharmaceutical Preparations

A simple and rapid isocratic high-performance liquid chromatographic method has been developed for the simultaneous analysis of the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs tenoxicam, piroxicam, meloxicam, and lornoxicam using isoxicam as an internal standard. The analyte was chromatographed using a Lichrosphere RP18 column, a Tris acetic acid buffer-tetrabutylammonium reagent-tetrahydrofuran-acetonitrile as the mobile phase, and UV detection at 360 nm. The separation obtained was very good. The method was applied to pharmaceutical formulations containing a single active ingredient and was shown to be linear, sensible, accurate, and reproducible. A very small modification of the mobile phase enabled the separation of tenoxicam, piroxicam, isoxicam, cinnoxicam,meloxicam, and lornoxicam with symmetrical and well resolved peaks.