Reverse phase high performance liquid chromatographic method for the estimation of curcumin

A simple, precise, rapid and accurate, binary reverse phase high performance liquid chromatographic method has been developed for the determination of curcumin, Demethoxy curcumin and Bismethoxy curcumin with short run time. Chromatographic separation was achieved by using Merck C15-(250 cm × 4.6 mm) Column with mobile phase tetrahydrofuran: 1% citric acid 35: 65 was used. The flow rate was 1.2 ml/min. The retention time for curcumin was 15.892 minutes. The proposed method was validated for sensitivity, selectivity, linearity, accuracy, precision, ruggedness, robustness and solution stability. The limit of detection and quantification of curcumin was between 1 to 500 ng/mL respectively for 50-μL injection volumes. Limit of detection and Limit of quantification was calculated by visualization and statistical methods. The % recovery of sample spiked standard ranged within 95-105 %. Method, system, interday and intraday precision was found to be within the limits of acceptance criteria. Method was found to be rugged when different analyst carried out analysis. The method was found to be sensitive and efficient with 4886.77 theoretical plates and 0.2046 mm HETP. The method was suitable for the quality control of curcumin therefore can be applied to both in vitro studies of curcumin formulations as well as drug estimation in biological samples.