Abstract

Diclofenac is one of the most commonly used non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs for the treatment of pain, rheumatism and other inflammatory conditions. The drug has analgesic, anti-pyritic and anti-inflammatory effects. Rapid and sensitive-reversed phase high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method was used to analyze the amount of Diclofenac in the samples. The calibration curve was linear with correlation coefficient (r²) of 0.9999 at concentration range of 10 to 80 µg/ml and coefficient of variance (CV %) of less than 5%. Percentage content of Diclofenac from the different pharmaceutical preparations was within 97.5 to 115.5%, but 42.86% failed with over range, while 57.14% passed the British Pharmacopoeia (BP) specification range of 95 to 105.0% of the prescribed content. The drug release profiles were evaluated in vitro using a dissolution test apparatus. The USP paddle method was used to perform the dissolution profiles of Diclofenac Sodium. From the result, there is still need for the policy markers in the country to checkmate the imports of different brands of pharmaceutical products into the Nigerian market, since almost 50% of the drug analyzed is above the stated amount claimed by the manufacturers.

Key words: Diclofenac, reversed phase- high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), ultraviolet (UV)-spectrophotometer, percentage content, Nigerian market.