New valid spectrofluorimetric method for determination of selected cephalosporins in different pharmaceutical formulations using safranin as fluorophore

Abstract

A new validated spectrofluorimetric method has been developed for the determination of some cephalosporins namely; cefepime, cefaclor, cefadroxil, cefpodoxime and cefexime. The method was based on the reaction of these drugs with safranin in slightly alkaline medium (pH8.0), to form ion-association complexes. The fluorescent products were extracted into chloroform and their fluorescence intensities were measured at 544–565nm after excitation at 518–524nm. The reaction conditions influencing the product formation and stability were investigated and optimized. The relative fluorescence intensity was proportional to the drug concentration in the linear ranges of 0.15–1.35, 0.35–1.25, 0.35–1.25, 0.20–1.44 and 0.20–1.25μg/mL for cefepime, cefaclor, cefadroxil, cefpodoxime proxetil and cefexime, respectively. The detection limits were 40, 100, 100, 60 and 70ng/mL, respectively. The performance of the developed method was evaluated in terms of Student's t-test and variance ratio F-test to find out the significance of proposed methods over the reference spectrophotometric method. Various pharmaceutical formulations were successfully analyzed using the proposed method and the results were in good agreement with those of the previously reported methods.