Screening of Antituberculosis Drugs by Thin Layer Chromatography: Experimental Investigation

Tuberculosis continues to be a major public health issue in developing countries. In South Asian countries TB is a very common and prevalent disease and most of the treatment programmes are governed directly through government agencies and hospitals. In this study, a novel thin-layer chromatographic screening approach for the identification of rifampicin, isoniazid, and pyrazinamide in pharmaceutical dosages was demonstrated. The solvent system used to determine these three drugs was (propanol: hexane: ethyl acetate: ammonia) (5:2:1.7:0.2 v/v) and the Rf value of rifampicin, pyrazinamide and isoniazid was 0.68, 0.74 and 0.50, respectively. The developed method for retention factor had intra-day and inter-day repeatability with a standard deviation (SD) of about 0.5-1.0%.