SIMULTANEOUS ESTIMATION OF ARTEMETHER & CURCUMIN BY RP-HPLC METHOD

Malaria still remains one of the killer disease in the world with an estimated 200-400 million cases and one million deaths annually. In the present study, a simple, accurate, rapid and precise reversed-phase high performance liquid chromatographic method has been developed and validated for simultaneous estimation of Artemether and Curcumin. The chromatographic separation was performed in isocratic mode on Chrombudget C18 (4.6 x 100 mm, 5 mu m) column with flow rate of 0.7 mL/min using mobile phase consisting mixture of acetonitrile (HPLC grade) and 0.1 % formic acid (in Milli-Q water v/v) in a ratio 60: 40 (v/v) at wavelength of 216 nm. Calibration plots were linear in range over the concentration range of 2500-7500 mu g/mL for Artemether and 25-75 mu g/mL for Curcumin. The method was validated for accuracy, precision, specificity, detection limit, quantization limit, linearity, range and robustness. The method showed excellent linearity with Coefficient of determination r2>0.99, % Relative Standard Deviation (RSDs) of intra-and inter-day precisions were satisfactory found 0.32 & 0.32 for Artemether and 0.31 & 2.04 for Curcumin. The recovery averages of Artemether and Curcumin were obtained 100% and 101% respectively. Limit of detection (LODs) and Limit of quantification (LOQs) were calculated as for 352.7 mu g/mL & 1068.8 mu g/mL for Artemether in linear range 2500-7500 mu g/mL and 3.21 mu g/mL & 9.75 mu g/mL for Curcumin in linear range. 25-75 mu g/mL. The high recovery and low relative standard deviation confirms the suitability of the method developed for Artemether (ART) and Curcumin (CUR).