New spectrofluorimetric method for determination of cephalosporins in pharmaceutical formulations

A simple, accurate, precise spectrofluorimetric method has been proposed for the determination of three cephalosporins, namely, cefixime (cefi), cephalexine (ceph), and cefotaxime sodium (cefo) in pharmaceutical formulations. This method is based on a reaction between cephalosporins with 8‐hydroxy‐1,3,6‐pyrenetrisulfonic acid trisodium salt (HPTS) in alkaline medium, at pH 12.0 for cefi and 13.0 for ceph and cefo to give highly fluorescent derivatives extracted with chloroform and subsequent measurements of the formed fluorescent products at 520, 500 and 510 nm after excitation at 480, 470 and 480 nm for cefi, ceph and cefo respectively. The optimum experimental conditions have been studied. Beer's law is obeyed over concentrations of 10–60 ng/mL, 5–35 ng/mL and 10–60 ng/mL for cefi, ceph and cefo, respectively. The detection limits were 4.20 ng/mL, 2.54 ng/mL and 4.09 ng/mL for cefi, ceph and cefo, respectively, with a linear regression correlation coefficient of 0.99783, 0.99705 and 0.9978 and recoveries in ranges 96.96–105.77, 96.13–102.55 and 95.45–105.39% for cefi, ceph and cefo, respectively. This method is simple and can be applied for the determination of cefi, ceph and cefo in pharmaceutical formulations in quality control laboratories. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.