Validation of UV Spectrophotometric Method for Fexofenadine Hydrochloride in Pharmaceutical Formulations and Comparison with HPLC

Abstract

A simple, reproducible, accurate, and effective spectrophotometric method was developed and validated for the quantitation of the antihistamine fexofenadine in capsules and coated tablets. Ethanol was used as solvent and the absorbance at the wavelength of 220 nm was employed to the quantitation of the drug. The method validation was fulfilled through the evaluation of the analytical parameters of linearity, precision, accuracy, limits of detection, and quantitation and specificity. The method was linear (r=0.9999) at concentrations ranging from 8.0 to 20.0 µg ml−1, precise (RSD intra‐day=0.29; 0.18; 0.39; RSD inter‐day=0.12 for capsules and RSD intra‐day=0.13; 0.16; 0.13; RSD inter‐day=0.13 for coated tablets), accurate (percentage recovery=99.97% for capsules and 100.51% for tablets), sensitive (limits of detection and quantitation of 0.10 and 0.29 µg ml−1, respectively) and specific. The method was compared to a high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method, which was previously developed to the same drug. The results showed no significant difference between the methods in fexofenadine hydrochloride quantitation.