Rapid and Reliable HPLC Method for the Determination of Vitamin C in Pharmaceutical Samples

Purpose: To develop and validate an accurate, sensitive and reproducible high performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) method for the quantitation of vitamin C in pharmaceutical samples. Method: The drug and the standard were eluted from Superspher RP-18 (250 mm x 4.6 mm, 10μm particle size) at 20 °C. The mobile phase was prepared by carefully adding acetic acid (500 ml) to 1.5g of 1-hexanesulfonic acid sodium salt and mixing well (pH 2.6). The flow rate was 0.7 mL min^-1. UV detector, set at 280 nm, was used to monitor the effluent. Results: Each analysis required no longer than 4 min. The limit of quantitation was 1.95 μg mL^-1. Recovery (%) for different concentrations ranged from 99.58 to 101.93. Conclusion: The simplicity of this low-cost, rapid technique and its high specificity to ascorbic acid, even in the presence of a variety of excipients, demonstrate that this HPLC method would be particularly suitable for the determination of ascorbic acid in the investigated preparations as well as other similar pharmaceutical/veterinary formulations without prior sample preparation.