Sensitive spectrophotometric method for the determination of pefloxacin

428-431A simple and sensitive spectrophotometric method is developed for the determination of pefloxacin in pure drug and in pharmaceutical preparations. The method is based on the reaction of pefloxacin with Folin-Ciocalteu reagent in sodium carhonate solution resulting in the formation of a blue coloured chromogen with an adsorption maximum at 760 nm. Beer's law is obeyed in the concentration range 10-45 μg mL-1 of pefloxacin, the molar absorptivity and Sandell sensitivity being 2.79× 103 1 mol-1 cm-1 and 119.03 ng cm-2, respectively. The reaction variables have been olptimised. When pharmaceutical preparations containing pefloxacin were analysed, the results obtained by the proposed method were in good agreement with the labeled amounts. The results of analysis have been validated statistically and by recovery studies.