Determination of ephedrine, theophylline and phenobarbital in a tablet dosage form by capillary electrophoresis

A capillary electrophoresis method was developed to separate and quantitate ephedrine (ED), theophylline (TP) and phenobarbital (PB) in a tablet dosage form. Tablets were ground and extracted with methanol using ultrasonication. Aliquots of standard stock solution were hydrodynamically injected for 5 s at the anodic end. Separation was performed on a fused silica capillary (72 cm x 50 microm i.d.; 50 cm to detector) at an applied voltage of 20 kV with a phosphate run buffer (pH 8.0, 50 mM). Analysis was performed at ambient temperature (23+/-1 degrees C) and the total run time was 9 min with detection at 220 nm. Calibration curves were prepared for ED, TP and PB with methyl p-hydroxy benzoate as internal standard. For each analyte, the correlation coefficients were >0.999 (n = 4). The RSD% of ten replicate injections for each analyte were <1%. The method was applied to the quantitation of ED, TP and PB in a commercial tablet dosage form.