Spectrophotometric Determination of Some Phenolic Antibiotics in Dosage Forms

Abstract.

 A simple and sensitive spectrophotometric method is described for the determination of some phenolic antibiotics namely: cefadroxil, amoxicillin and vancomycin. The method is based on the measurement of the orange yellow species produced when the drugs are coupled with diazotized benzocaine in triethylamine medium. The method is applicable over the range of 0.8–12 μg/ml for cefadroxil, 2–16 μg/ml for amoxicillin and 2–18 μg/ml for vancomycin. The formed compounds absorb at 455 nm for both cefadroxil and amoxicillin and at 442 nm for vancomycin. The proposed method has detection limits of 0.018 μg for cefadroxil, 0.0034 μg for amoxicillin and 0.0156 μg for vancomycin.

The stoichiometric ratio for the studied compounds was found to be 1:1 and a proposal of the reaction pathway was made. The proposed method was applied for the analysis of the cited drugs in their pharmaceutical preparations. The results are in good agreement with those obtained by the official methods.