Spectrophotometric determination of some pharmaceutically important nitro compounds in their dosage forms

Abstract

A spectrophotometric method for the determination of three nitro derivatives, namely, oxamniquine, nitrazepam and chloramphenicol, is described. The proposed method involves reduction of the analyte with Zn-HCl followed by diazotisation and coupling of the resulting diazonium salt with ethyl acetoacetate in alkaline medium. The stoicheiometry of the reaction was assessed and a possible reaction pathway is presented. The nominal recovery of the drugs from pharmaceutical preparations ranges from 98.78 ± 0.51 to 100.96 ± 0.81%. The method is simple, sensitive and applicable to unit dose analysis.