A Sensitive Reversed Phase HPLC Method for the Determination of Curcumin

A simple, precise, rapid and accurate, binary reverse phase high performance liquid chromatographic method has been developed for the determination of curcumin a natural drugs with short run time. Chromatographic separation was achieved by using Merck C₁₅ (250 cm X 4.6 mm) Column with mobile phase acetonitril: tetrahydrofuran: 2% acetic acid 50:30:20 (2%) was used. The flow rate was 0.7 ml/min. The retention time was 4.587 minutes. The limit of detection and limit of quantification of curcumin were between 3.68 to 8.125 ng/ml for 50-μL injection volumes. The percentage recovery of curcumin was found to be 97.2 to 98.4 and Relative standard deviation was 0.345 % and 1.160 %. The developed HPLC method can therefore be applied to both in vitro studies of curcumin formulations as well as drug estimation in biological samples.