High performance liquid chromatographic determination of sodium benzoate, methylparaben and propylparaben as preservative components in nystatin suspensions

A simple and sensitive method was developed for the analysis of preservatives sodium benzoate, methylparaben and propylparaben in nystatin suspensions by reversed-phase high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), equipped with a C18 column and PDA detector. The mobile phase was a mixture of acetonitrile and acetate buffer of pH 4.4 (35:65 v/v). Under the optimized experimental conditions, separation of the preservatives was achieved in less than 20 min. The limits of quantifications (LOQs) and the linear dynamic ranges (LDRs) of sodium benzoate, methylparaben and propylparaben were 0.3 and 50–1000 μg Ml^?1, 0.5 and 50–600 μg ml^?1 and 0.3 and 50–900 μg ml^?1, respectively; the respective precisions (%RSD) at 500 μg ml^?1 level were 0.72%, 0.73% and 0.51% (n = 6). The average recoveries of sodium benzoate, methylparaben and propylparaben for spiked nystatin samples were obtained as 98%, 97% and 98%, respectively.