Profiling of cetyl pyridinium chloride in marketed formulations by stability indicating green planar chromatographic method

Cetylpyridinium chloride (CPC) owing to its microbicidal qualities is one of the most frequently used cationic surfactant in various products for the purpose of treatment of common infections of throat and mouth. A new ‘green’ HPTLC method for rapid analysis of CPC in standard form and in overthe-counter formulations was developed and validated in the present study. The method utilized silica gel as stationary phase and a combination of ethanol:ethyl acetate:NaOH (3:2:1) as an eluent. It was found that the selected eluent provided better peak and suitable R_F value than the other studied eluents. The developed system was validated for linearity, accuracy, precision, robustness, solution stability, recovery and specificity. Excellent linear relationship was observed for the linear regression data for the calibration plots. Limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantitation (LOQ) were found to be 31 and 94 ng/band, respectively. Results obtained from the statistical treatment of the values obtained for different parameters proved that the method is suitable, reproducible and selective for the analysis of CPC in bulk as well as in marketed formulations. The applicability of the proposed method was tested by an assay of CPC in commercially available mouth rinses. The method could be put to test for the prediction of shelf life of formulations containing CPC as a constituent. The substituition of commonly applicable corrosive and volatile solvents with unique, innocuous, and environment friendly ones presents a better alternative to the more toxic chemicals and processes in drug and/or pharmaceutical analysis.