Spectrofluorimetric determination of certain adrenergic agonist drugs in their pure forms and pharmaceutical formulations: Content uniformity test application

Abstract

A new, simple, sensitive and rapid spectrofluorimetric method has been developed for determination of certain adrenergic agonists such as isoxsuprine hydrochloride, ritodrine hydrochloride and etilefrine hydrochloride in their pure forms and pharmaceutical dosage forms. The method depends on micellar enhancement of the native fluorescence of investigated drugs by using 2% w/v sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) as an anionic surfactant. The enhanced fluorescence intensity of investigated drugs was measured at 305 nm after excitation at 278 nm. The interaction of studied drugs with SDS was studied, and the enhanced fluorescence intensity was exploited to develop an assay method for the determination of investigated drugs. The relative fluorescence intensity-concentration plots were rectilinear over the range 0.15-3.00 μg ml^-1 , with low quantification limits of 0.132, 0.123 and 0.118 μg mL^-1 for isoxsuprine, ritodrine and etilefrine, respectively. The proposed method was successfully applied for determination of studied drugs in their pharmaceutical formulations. Moreover, the high sensitivity of the proposed method allows performing the content uniformity testing of the studied drugs in their tablets by using the official United States Pharmacopeia (USP) guidelines. Statistical comparisons of the results with those of the reported methods revealed excellent agreement and indicated no significant difference in accuracy and precision.

Keywords: etilefrine; isoxsuprine; ritodrine; sodium dodecyl sulfate; spectrofluorimetry.