Development and Validation of Stability Indicating HPLC Method for the Determination of Impurities in the Sterile Mixture of Cefoperazone and Sulbactam

Background: Cefoperazone Sulbactam injection is a cephalosporin antibiotic with a β- lactamase inhibitor used in the treatment for intra abdominal infections, Urinary track infections, surgical infections, etc. The combination is not official in any of the pharmacopeia for their content and impurities determination. Introduction: The present study involves the development of a simple, rapid, accurate, sensitive and stability indicating RP-HPLC method for the quantitative estimation of Cefoperazone Sulbactam mixture and its impurities in bulk and pharmaceutical dosage forms. Methods: 0.005 M Tetrabutyl ammonium hydroxide buffer solution pH adjusted to 6.80 and Acetonitrile combination has been used in a gradient programme with a flow rate of 1.0 ml/min. The retention time of Cefoperazone and Sulbactam were observed at around 8.5 and 19.5 minutes respectively. The UV detection was carried out at a wavelength of 230 nm. The chromatographic separation was achieved using Waters xbridge C18-150*4.6 mm, 3.5 µm HPLC column. The method has been validated according to the current International Council for Harmonization (ICH) guidelines for the method validation parameters such as Specificity, linearity, range, accuracy, precision, robustness and sensitivity. Results: The validation results indicate that the method is specific, as the known impurities and other impurities formed during the forced degradation studies were not co-eluting with the main components. Moreover, all these impurities were found to be spectrally pure, proving the stability indicating power of the method. The linearity and range of the method is in the range of 0.01-150%, highly accurate (100.2%), precise (<1%) and robust. Conclusion: The proposed method was accurate and specific for the quantitative analysis of Cefoperazone and Sulbactam and their related impurities in the sterile mixture. Hence the proposed method can be used for the quantification of impurities in routine as well as stability analysis in the development as well as quality control laboratories.