Liquid Chromatographic Determination of Methyldopa and Methyldopa-Thiazide Combinations in Dosage Forms

A liquid chromatographic (LC) method, using a reverse phase C18 column, an acetic acid-methanol-water mobile phase, and detection at 280 nm, was developed for the determination of methyldopa in tablets and oral suspensions and combinations of methyldopa with hydrochlorothiazide or chlorothiazide in tablets. A mixture of these 3 drugs was resolved in <8 min. Detector responses were linear for the following amounts (mg/mL) of drug injected: methyldopa 0.031-0.393, chlorothiazide 0.019-0.114, and hydrochlorothiazide 0.004-0.083. Recoveries from commercial dosage forms ranged from 99.1 to 100.9% for methyldopa, 99.2-100.4% for chlorothiazide, and 100.0-101.2% for hydrochlorothiazide. Replicate injections of methyldopa, chlorothiazide, and hydrochlorothiazide standard preparations alone or in combination gave overall relative standard deviations of <1.6% (n = 10). The results for methyldopa tablets by the proposed method were in agreement with those obtained by the USP XX method. The LC method detected as little as 0.6 μg 3-O-methylmethyldopa/mL and 0.5 μg 4-amino-6- chloro-l,3-benzenedisulfonamide/mL, which are sometimes found as contaminants of methyldopa and thiazides, respectively, and resolved methyldopa from its methyldopa glucose adduct, a substance found in methyldopa oral suspensions.