Flow Injection Spectrophotometric Determination of the Antibacterial Levofloxacin in Tablets and Human Urine

Abstract

A sensitive and fast flow‐injection (FI) spectrophotometric method for the determination of levofloxacin based on the formation of a colored product upon oxidation with N‐bromosuccinimide (NBS) in acidic medium is proposed. Optimization of chemical and FI variables has been made. Under the optimized conditions, the sampling rate was over 90 h⁻¹, the calibration curve obtained was linear over the range 10–300 µg·mL⁻¹, and the detection limit was 3 µg·mL⁻¹. The proposed method was successfully applied to the determination of levofloxacin in pharmaceuticals and human urine samples. It was also found that the excipients in the commercial tablet preparation did not interfere with the assay. Results are precise (RSD<2.7%; n =10) and in agreement with those found by the reference high pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC) procedure.

Keywords:

• Levofloxacin
• spectrophotometric
• flow injection analysis
• pharmaceutical products
• urine

The financial support from Yarmouk University is gratefully acknowledged. The author would like to thank Al‐Hikma Pharmaceuticals, Amman, Jordan, for providing the standard and the excipients.