Application of Narrow-Bore HPLC Columns in Rapid Determination of Sildenafil Citrate in Its Pharmaceutical Dosage Forms

     A special type of silica-based columns has been recently introduced into the market which is called narrow-bore columns. They have lower internal volume than the standard high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) columns and thus reduce the solvent consumption by almost 80%.    A simple, accurate and environmentally friendly reversed phase- HPLC (RP-HPLC method) which could be used in fast and high throughput analyses has been developed for the purpose of determining the sildenafil in bulk and pharmaceutical dosage forms, using narrow-bore C18 column (50 × 3.2 mm, 5 µm particle size) in isocratic mode, with mobile phase comprising of buffer (pH = 3) and acetonitrile in the ratio of 75:25 v/v.    The flow rate was 0.7 mL/min and the detection was monitored through Ultraviolet detector (UV detector) at 292 nm. Clonazepam was used as the internal standard and the run time was 4 min.    The proposed method has permitted the quantification of sildenafil over the linearity in the range of 30-4000 ng/mL and its percentage recovery was found to be 99-105%. Limit of quantitation (LOQ) is determined as 30 ng/mL. The intra-day and inter-day precisions were found 1.2-2.2% and 1.56-3.4% respectively. The solvent consumption was 2.8 mL per sample of which ca 0.7 mL was acetonitrile.    This study shows that the application of narrow-bore column instead of the conventional reversed phase column in HPLC analyses has the advantages of shorter run time and less organic solvent consumption. This method is highly sensitive with excellent recoveries and precision and there is no need for special column and pre-column or post-column treatment of the sample. Moreover, the method is free from interference by common additives and excipients, suggesting applications in routine quality control analyses.