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Lumefantrine is an aryl amino alcohol
derivative widely used in combination with artemether for the
therapy of malaria. A simple and accurate spectrophotometric method
has been developed and validated for the quantitative determination
of lumefantrine in finished pharmaceutical products. The proposed
method is based on the charge-transfer (CT) reaction of lumefantrine
(as n-electron donor) with picric acid (2, 4, 6-trinitrophenol) as
π-acceptor to give a highly colored CT complex. The different
variables affecting the reaction such as reagent concentration,
dilution solvent, and reaction time were carefully optimized to
achieve the highest sensitivity. The lumefantrine-picric acid CT
complex was quantified spectrophotometrically at 420 nm, and Beer’s
law was obeyed over the concentration range of 20–100 μg/mL with
correlation coefficient (r2) of 0.9981. The limit of detection and
quantification were found to be 0.884 μg/mL and 1.507 μg/mL,
respectively, for the method. The proposed method was also found to
give comparable results with the official method as no statistically
significant differences were found in the percentage drug content
for five brands assayed by both methods. The developed method can,
therefore, be successfully applied to analyze lumefantrine content
in both raw materials and finished pharmaceutical products. |
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Key words:
Lumefantrine, Spectrophotometry, Picric acid, Charge transfer
complex, Method development |
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