Selective spectrofluorimetric determination of phenolic β-lactam antibiotics through the formation of their coumarin derivatives

A simple, sensitive and selective spectrofluorimetric procedure was developed for the determination of amoxycillin, cefadroxil and cefoperazone. The method is based on the reaction between these drugs and ethyl acetoacetate, in acidic medium, to give yellow fluorescent products with excitation a wavelengths ranging from 401 to 467 nm and emission wavelengths ranging from 365 to 503 nm. The reaction conditions were studied and optimized. The reaction obeyed Beers law over the range of 10.0-20.0, 1.5-1.0 and 50.0-100.0 mu g ml(-1) for amoxycillin, cefadroxil and cefoperazone, respectively. Interference's from other antibiotics, drugs and dosage forms additives, in capsules and vials dosage forms, were investigated. The proposed method was applied to the analysis of pharmaceutical formulations (capsules and vials) containing the above antibiotics, either alone or in combination with other antibiotics or drugs. The validity of the method was tested by the recovery studies of standard addition which were found to be satisfactory. The results of the proposed method demonstrated that the method is equally accurate, precise and reproducible as the official methods (USP XXIII) and those published for the non-official binary mixtures. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.