Propofol quantification method in palm oil based nanoemulsion formula using RP-HPLC

HPLC is one of the methods that is widely used for the routine determination of drug content in a pharmaceutical dosage form. The objective on this research was to develop a simple method to determine the propofol concentration in a new formulation using a palm oil-based nanoemulsion carrier system (NEMS™ MCT/LCT). The method used was reverse phase high performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC) using a C18 column with methanol and water (80:20) as the mobile phase and UV wavelength detection was 276 nm. The retention time obtained for the drug in NEMS MCT/LCT was 6.32 min. This was similar to the retention time of the standard. The correlation coefficient value from the calibration curve was 0.9998. The drug contents were 100.90% and 100.24% for the 1% and 2% NEMS MCT/LCT, respectively. The result indicated that the RP-HPLC method used for the analysis of propofol in the palm oil-based emulsion system was able to accurately determine the concentration of the drug.This method is suitable for routine determination of propofol concentration in palm oil-based emulsion formulations.