Use of chloramine-T and two dyes in the sensitive determination of stavudine in pharmaceuticals

Abstract

Three new methods are described for the assay of stavudine (STV) in bulk drug and in dosage forms using chloramine-T (CAT) and two dyes, methyl orange and indigocarmine, as reagents. Titrimetry involves treating STV with a measured excess of CAT in hydrochloric acid medium, and after the oxidation of STV is judged to be complete, the unreacted oxidant is determined iodometrically. Spectrophotometric methods entail the addition of a known excess of CAT to STV in hydrochloric acid medium followed by determination of residual oxidant by reacting with a fixed amount of either methyl orange and measuring the absorbance at 520 nm (Method A) or indigo carmine and measuring the absorbance at 610 nm (Method B). In all the methods, the amount of CAT reacted corresponds to the amount of STV. In titrimetric method, the reaction follows 1:1 stoichiometry (STV: CAT), and is applicable over the range 1.5-10 mg of STV. In spectrophotometric methods, the absorbance is found to increase linearly with concentration of STV. The systems obey Beer's law for 0.2-2.0 and 1.0-10.0 mg/mL for method A and method B, respectively. The apparent molar absorptivities are calculated to be 5.7x10(4) and 1.5x10(4) L/mol/cm for method A and method B, respectively, and the corresponding Sandell sensitivity values are 0.004 and 0.015 µg/cm². The limits of detection and quantification are reported for both methods. Intra-day and inter-day precision and accuracy of the developed methods were evaluated as per the current ICH guidelines. The methods were successfully applied to the assay of STV in tablet and capsule formulations and the results were compared with those of a reference method by applying Student's t-test and F-test. No interference was observed from common tablet adjuvants. The accuracy and reliability of the methods were further ascertained by performing recovery experiments via standard-addition method.