Stability studies of expired tablets of metoprolol tartrate and propranolol hydrochloride. Part 1. Content determination.

In recent years the growing interest in drug stability problem has been observed. The stability of pharmaceutical products seems to play an important role from the economical point of view. However, there are not many studies that reported about the stability of drugs past their expiration dates. The objective of the current study was to determine tablet content of expired tablets and tablets with expiry date has not been exceeded. The analyzed tablets contained metoprolol tartrate (50 mg) and propranolol hydrochloride (10 mg), respectively. Content determination was performed using HPLC method with UV detection. The proposed method was validated with regard to linearity, sensitivity, intermediate accuracy and precision. No discrepancies between the results of determination and the declared values range for all the analyzed tablets were observed. The results of performed study might suggest that storage of analyzed batches of tablets over time period exceeding the expiry date given by the manufacturer did not influence their contents.