Aim of the present study was to develop and validate a rapid, selective, sensitive and economical reverse phase high performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC) method for quantification of Piroxicam, 5-hydroxypiroxicam (metabolite) and internal standard (meloxicam) in human plasma and evaluation of pharmacokinetics of piroxicam in Pakistani population, using the developed RP-HPLC/UV method. Piroxicam, 5- hydroxypiroxicam and internal standard (I.S) were separated using a CNW C18 RP (250 mm × 4.6 mm, 5 µm) column as a stationary phase and mixture of acetonitrile and aqueous solution of triflouro acetic acid (0.05%) in the ratio of 62:38 was used as a mobile phase. The flow of mobile phase was adjusted at the rate of 1 mL/min under the ambient temperature and eluents were studied at 353 nm. The analysis time was 8 min. The spiked and real plasma samples were processed using acetonitrile and diethyl ether as protein precipitating agent and extraction solvent, respectively. Blood samples were collected from all volunteers at different time intervals i.e., 0.5, 1, 1.5, 2, 2.5, 3, 4, 6, 8, 24, 48, 72 and 96 hr after taking piroxicam 20 mg oral dose. Various pharmacokinetic parameters of piroxicam were determined like AUC0−96 hr (104074.2029 ± 21782.84582 ng-h/mL), clearance (2.362155 ± 0.532145 mL/min), volume of distribution (8.858337 ± 1.549941 L) and elimination half-life (55.89 ± 10.39 hr), after analyzing the human plasma samples


Naila Shahbaz, Zafar Iqbal, Fazli Nasir, Fahim Ullah Khan, Amanullah Muhammad Hassan and Sumaira Irum Khan