Spectrophotometric determination of carvedilol in pharmaceutical formulations through charge-transfer and ion-pair complexation reactions

Simple extraction-free spectrophotometric methods have been developed for the determination of carvedilol (CAR). The methods were based either on charge-transfer reaction of the drug with the sigma-acceptor iodine, in acetonitrile, or on ion-pair formation with the acidic sulphophthalein dyes bromothymol blue (BTB) and bromocresol green (BCG), in chloroform. The obtained complexes showed absorbance maxima at 363, 411 and 414 nm, respectively for iodine, BTB and BCG. Beer's law validation, accuracy, precision, and other aspects of analytical merit are presented in the text. The proposed methods were applied for the determination of CAR in tablets and compounded capsules. The results were in good agreement with those obtained by an established UV spectrophotometric method.