Development and Validation of HPLC–Photodiode Array Method for Detecting Steroids in Skin Whitening Products Simultaneously

Since steroids are prohibited to be present in cosmetic products, thus an identification of these outlawed compounds intentionally incorporated in skin whitening product is enough for market surveillance purpose. Simultaneous method for detecting prednisone (PRN), triamcinolone acetonide (TCA), hydrocortisone acetate (HCA), clobetasole propionate (CBP), and mometasone furoate (MTF) has not been developed until now. The goals of this study were to develop and to validate for screening these five steroid compounds in cosmetic product by using reverse phase (RP) high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) equipped with photo diode array (PDA) detector. Validation method was applied including the system suitability test, determination of specificity and selectivity, and determination of detection limit. . In optimization step, we succeeded distinguish and identify five steroid compounds with different retention time.The retention times of PRN, TCA, HCA, CBP and MTF were detected at 3.267, 4.260, 4.910, 15.360, and 16.707 min, respectively. The method performed good selectivity with resolution more than 1.5. While for determination of limit of detection (LOD) was carried out by calibration curve approach over the range 0.5-5 µg/ml and resulted in LOD value for PRN, TCA, HCA, CBP and MTF  were 7.20, 8.85, 8.17, 9.30, and 8.42 µg/g, respectively.  The developed method can be applied for routine analysis of PRN, TCA, HCA, CBP and MTF  in various type of cosmetic products.