Development and validation of an HPLC method for determination of quercetin

This study validated a high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method for the determination of quercetin (QE) in microemulsion (ME) based gel formulations. The analyses were performed on a C18 column (150x4.6 mm, 5 μm particle size) at room temperature with UV detection at 254 nm. The mobile phase was composed of methanol:water (65:35, v/v, 2% acetic acid) mixture, and flow rate was set to 1 mL/min. The method was validated according to the international guidelines with respect to linearity range, stability, limit of quantitation and detection, precision and accuracy. The method was linear within 5 – 100 μg/mL range with a correlation coefficient of 0.9995. The intra- and inter-assay precisions presented RSD values lower than 2%. The method reported is a fast and reliable HPLC method useful for QE determination in ME based gel formulations.