Atorvastatin 1) is a synthetic lipid lowering agent which inhibits HMG-CoA reductase and amlodipine 2) is a calcium antagonist drug effective in hypertension and angina pectoris. The combination drug product of atorvastatin (ATV) and amlodipine (AML) has recently been introduced in the market; co-administration of AML with ATV demonstrated statistically significant dose-related reductions in systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP) and LDL-C in patients with co-morbid hypertension and dyslipidemia.
3)Chemically ATV is [R-(R*,R*)]-2-(4-fluorophenyl)-b, dihydroxy-5-(1-methylethyl)-3-phenyl-4-[(phenylamino) carbonyl]-1H-pyrrole-1-heptanoic acid, calcium salt (2 : 1) trihydrate 4) and AML is 2-[(2-Aminoethoxy)-methyl]-4-(2-chlorophenyl)-1,4-dihydro-6-methyl-3,5-pyridinedicarboxylic acid 3-ethyl 5-methyl ester.
5)Stability testing forms an important part of the process of drug product development. The purpose of stability testing is to provide evidence on how the quality of a drug substance or drug product varies with time under the influence of a variety of environmental factors such as temperature, humidity, and light, and enables recommendation of storage conditions, retest periods, and shelf lives to be established. The two main aspects of drug product that play an important role in shelf life determination are assay of active drug, and degradation products generated, during the stability study. The assay of drug product in stability test sample needs to be determined using stability indicating method, as recommended by the International Conference on Harmonization (ICH) guidelines 6) and USP-26. 7) Although stability indicating methods have been reported for assay of various drugs in drug products, most of them describe assay procedures for drug products containing only one active drug substance. Only few stability indicating methods are reported for assay of combination drug products containing two or more active drug substances. The objective of this work was to develop a simple, precise and rapid analytical LC procedure, which would serve as stability indicating assay method for combination drug product of ATV and AML.Both methods have been reported for simultaneous determination of ATV and AML, but these methods lack stability indicating nature. None of the reported analytical procedures describe a stability indicating method for simultaneous determination of ATV and AML in presence of their degradation products. This manuscript describes the development and validation of a stability indicating isocratic reversed-phase HPLC method for simultaneous determination of ATV and AML in presence of their degradation products as per ICH guidelines. The study describes development and subsequent validation of a stability indicating reverse-phase HPLC method for the simultaneous estimation of atorvastatin (ATV), and amlodipine (AML) from their combination drug product. The proposed RP-HPLC method utilizes a Lichrospher ® 100 C 18 , 5 m mm, 250 mm؋4.0 mm i.d. column, at ambient temperature, optimum ...