The objective of the current investigation was to develop a simple, rapid, and stability-indicating high-performance liquid chromatography method and to study the degradation behavior of sulfapyridine (SP) under different International Conference on Harmonization (ICH)-recommended conditions. The chromatographic method was developed using C18 (250 × 4.6 mm, 5 μ) column, and mobile phase consisting of acetonitrile-0.1% formic acid (30:70 v/v) at ambient temperature, at a flow rate of 1 mL/min. The elution was monitored at 265 nm using a photodiode array detector. The developed method was subsequently validated as per ICH Q2 (R1) guidelines. The retention time of SP was observed as 4.56 min with the linearity range between 2 to 10 μg/mL. Limit of detection and limit of quantitation for SP were 0.115 and 0.35 μg/mL, respectively. Forced degradation studies were carried out on bulk samples of SP using prescribed acidic, basic, oxidative, thermal, and photolytic conditions. Extent of degradation in 0.1 M hydrochloric acid and under photolytic conditions was found to be 21.56% and 28.57%, respectively. The degradation products formed in stress conditions were identified by liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS). The utility of the method was verified by quantification of SP in different laboratory-made pharmaceutical preparations. The proposed method could be successfully used to quantify SP in different pharmaceutical dosage forms.
Keywords: HPLC; LCMS; forced degradation study; stability-indicating method; sulfapyridine.