Dapsone (DAP), 4,4Ј-diaminodiphenyl sulfone, is used to treat leprosy and other skin conditions. 2) It may also be used to prevent malaria, for certain types of arthritis or other inflammatory conditions and pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP). Metoclopramide hydrochloride (MCP), chemically, 4-amino-5-chloro-[2-(diethylamino)ethyl]-2-methoxybenzamide HCl is used to relieve certain stomach and esophagus problems such as diabetic gastroparesis and gastroesophageal reflux disorder (GERD). 3) Oral MCP may also be used to prevent nausea and vomiting caused by other medications. Moreover, MCP may be used in the fields of surgery, gynecology, cardiology and radiology.Due to their wide administration, considerable work has been done for determination of DAP and MCP include HPLC, 4-7) electron capture gas chromatography [8][9][10] and GC-MS 11) but involve an expensive experimental setup. Official methods for the determination of these drugs are usually based on extraction of the drug as a free base and its subsequent determination by UV-spectrophotometry. 12,13) Thus these methods suffer from strongly interferences of drug excipients and diluents. Spectrophotometric determination of these drugs has been proposed based on diazotization, [14][15][16][17] ion pair complexes, 18) charge transfer complexes, 19,20) and the formation of coloured Schiffs base upon interaction with dimethylaminocinnamaldehyde 21) and use of 9-chloroacridine 22) and sodium 1,2-naphthoquinone-4-sulfonic 23) as chromogenic reagents. These methods involve a time-consuming extraction procedures or heating and require strictly controlled reaction conditions. Many of these methods are less sensitive.For routine quality control, development of a simple, rapid and sensitive spectrophotometric method is highly desirable. In this paper, the employment of benzoylacetone as a new coupling agent for simple, rapid, accurate, precise and an inexpensive method for determination of DAP and MCP in bulk and pharmaceutical preparations is described. Furthermore, a simple first derivative spectrophotometric procedure has been applied to the simultaneous determination of DAP and MCP in synthetic binary mixture and pharmaceutical preparations without prior separation.
ExperimentalApparatus A double-beam UV/Vis spectrophotometer (Perkin Elmer, lambda 3B) interfaced to IBM compatible computer with the capability of derivative mode operation was used. The spectra were recorded in 1-cm matched quartz cells. Suitable settings for recording the first-derivative spectra were: scan speed, 120 nm/min; response time, 2 s; spectral slit width, 2 nm; Dl, 1 nm; the ordinate minimum and maximum were Ϯ0.2 for the determination of DAP and MCP. The derivative spectra were obtained by numerical calculation with the aid of PECSS program using Savitzky-Golay algorithm. 24) Measurement of pH was carried out with a Janco electronics LTD digital pH-meter with a combined glass Calomel electrode.Reagents and Chemicals All chemicals were of analytical-reagent grade. Benzoylacetone (BAC, 2ϫ10 Ϫ...