Spectrofluorimetric determination of cephradine in commercial formulation using ethylacetoacetate-formaldehyde as fluorogenic agent

A simple, precise and sensitive spectrofluorimetric method was developed for the determination of cephradine in pharmaceutical formulations. The method is based on reaction of cephradine with ethyl acetoacetate (EAA) in the presence of formaldehyde in acidic media. The fluorescence intensity of the resultant fluorescent derivative was measured at 443 nm after excitation at 350 nm. The effects of various experimental parameters on the formation of the fluorescent product were studied and optimized. A linear relationship between concentration of cephradine and fluorescence intensity was found over the range of 0.1-5.0 μg/mL. The limit of detection and quantification were calculated an found 1.09 × 10^-2 ± 3.64 × 10^-3 μg/mL and 3.64 × 10^-2 ± 3.64 × 10^-3 μg/mL, respectively and with relative standard deviation (RSD) 4.14%. Accuracy of the method was checked by standard addition method and applied to four different commercial formulations. The percentage recovery was found in the range of 97.03 to 103.80% for Velora suspension, 98.16 to 102.90% for velocef injection, 99.00 to 108.10% for Velora capsule and 99.06 to 104.90% for Cefradin capsule. The good percentage recoveries from all samples indicated that there were no interferences from the common excipients of formulations. The proposed method was successfully applied to the analysis of commercial suspension, capsule and injections. The result obtained by the proposed method was statistically validated with reference HPLC method. No significant difference in the results of the two methods was found regarding accuracy and precision using Student's t-test and the variance ratio F-test.