A validated stability-indicating liquid chromatographic method for the determination of retapamulin in topical dosage form.

A sensitive, stability-indicating reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatographic method is developed and validated for the quantitative determination of retapamulin in topical dosage form. The chromatographic separation is achieved by using a C18 column (XTerra RP 18 250 × 4.6 mm, 5 µm) at 30°C. The mobile phase comprises a mixture of 0.05M potassium dihydrogen phosphate buffer (pH 6.1), acetonitrile and methanol in the ratio of 35:50:15 (v/v/v). The flow rate is set at 1.0 mL/min and chromatograms are extracted at 243 nm using a photodiode array detector. The method is validated with respect to linearity, accuracy, precision, robustness and forced degradation studies, which further prove the stability-indicating supremacy of the method. During forced degradation studies, retapamulin is observed to be labile to oxidative and base hydrolysis stress and stable in thermal, photolytic and acid hydrolysis stress. The degradation products are well separated from the retapamulin peak, thus proving the stability-indicating superiority of the method. The method is found to be sensitive for retapamulin, with a detection limit of 25 ng/mL and a quantification limit of 80 ng/mL. The proposed method is found to be very sensitive and accurate for the determination of retapamulin in topical dosage form. The method is also demonstrated to be robust, because it is resistant to small variations of chromatographic variables such as pH, mobile phase composition, flow rate and column temperature.