CHROMATOGRAPHIC DETERMINATION OF CURCUMIN IN THE PRESENCE OF ITS DEGRADATION PRODUCTS BY HPLC

A simple, selective, precise, and stability-indicating RP-HPLC method has been developed for the determination of Curcumin in bulk forms and solid dosage formulations. The HPLC separation was achieved on Waters Spherisorb ODS2 column (4.6mm x 250mm, 5 mu m particle size) using a mobile phase of methanol-water (77:33 v/v, pH 3) at a flow rate of 1ml/min and spectrophotometric detection at 419 nm. The method was validated for specificity, linearity, accuracy, precision, solution stability, robustness, system suitability, and ruggedness. The detector response for the Curcumin was linear over the selected concentration range from 1 to 10 mu g/ml, with a correlation coefficient of 0.9993. The accuracy was between 99.27& 101.97%. The precision (R.S.D.) among the six sample preparations was 1.27%. The LOD and LOQ are 0.092 and 0.278 mu g/ml, respectively. The recovery of curcumin was about 100.12%. The drug was subjected to acid and alkali hydrolysis, oxidation, wet heat treatment, and photodegradation. The drug undergoes degradation under former conditions, which indicates that the drug is susceptible to acid and base hydrolysis, wet heat, oxidation, and photo-oxidation. Thus, this method could be utilized to effectively separate the drug from its degradation products.