Simultaneous estimation of ibuprofen, caffeine, and paracetamol in commercial products using a green reverse-phase HPTLC method

Abstract

A fast, sensitive, and green reverse-phase “high-performance thin-layer chromatography” approach for the simultaneous estimation of ibuprofen (IBF), caffeine (CAF), and paracetamol (PCM) in marketed formulations was established and verified in this study. The binary combination of acetone and water (80:20 v/v) was used as the green eluent system. The current method’s greenness was predicted using four different approaches, namely National Environmental Method Index, Analytical Eco-Score (89), ChlorTox (1.08 g), and the Analytical GREENness (83) approaches, which demonstrated an outstanding greener profile. The present approach was linear in the range of 25–800 ng·band−1 for the simultaneous estimation of IBF, CAF, and PCM. In addition, the current method was accurate (% recoveries = 100 ± 2), precise (%CV < 2%), robust (%CV < 2), sensitive (LOD = 1.13–2.71 ng·band−1 and LOQ = 3.39–8.10 ng·band−1), and green. The amount of IBF, CAF, and PCM in commercial tablets was determined to be 99.51%, 98.25%, and 100.64%, respectively. The present method for the simultaneous determination of IBF, CAF, and PCM in marketed tablets is supported by these data. The findings of this study suggested that the current approach may be consistently applied to analyze IBF, CAF, and PCM in marketed tablets.