Utility of NBD-Cl for the spectrophotometric determination of some skeletal muscle relaxant and antihistaminic drugs

A simple, accurate, precise and sensitive colorimetric method for the determination of some skeletal muscle relaxant drugs, namely orphenadrine citrate (I), baclofen (II), antihistaminic drugs as acrivastine (III) and fexofenadine hydrochloride (IV) is described. This method is based on the formation of charge transfer complex with 4-chloro-7-nitro-2,1,3-benzoxadiazole (NBD-Cl) in non-aqueous medium. The orange color products were measured at 472, 465, 475 and 469 mn for drugs I, II, III and IV, respectively. The optimization of various experimental conditions was described. Beer's Law was obeyed in the range (2.5-17.5), (5-70), (2.5-25) and (10-50) mu g/ml for drugs I, II, III and IV, respectively. The molar absorptivity (epsilon), sandell sensitivity, detection((LOD)) and quantitation limits((LOQ)) are calculated. The procedure was favorably applied for determination of certain pharmaceutical dosage forms containing the studied drugs. The obtained results were compared with the official and reported methods. There were no significant differences between proposed, reported and the official methods. (C) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.