Tropical Journal of Pharmaceutical Research

Original Research Article | OPEN ACCESS

An alternative colorimetric method for the determination of chloramphenicol

Chukwuenweniwe J Eboka, Johnson . Smart, Sunday A Adelusi

Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Benin, Benin City, Nigeria;

For correspondence:- Chukwuenweniwe Eboka Email:

Published: 17 December 2003

Citation: Eboka CJ, Smart J., Adelusi SA. An alternative colorimetric method for the determination of chloramphenicol. Trop J Pharm Res 2003; 2(2):215-221 doi: 10.4314/tjpr.v2i2.4

© 2003 The authors.
This is an Open Access article that uses a funding model which does not charge readers or their institutions for access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0) and the Budapest Open Access Initiative (http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read), which permit unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited..

Abstract

Purpose: To develop a simple, cheap, fast, accurate, sensitive and precise colorimetric method that can be used for the determination of chloramphenicol.
Method: Chloramphenicol was reduced in a mixture of glacial acetic acid and water using titanium (III) chloride at room temperature within 10 min. The reduced product was then heated for 20 min with p-dimethylaminobenzaldehyde to yield the final product whose absorbance was used for the determination of the concentration of chloramphenicol. Results obtained with this method were compared with those obtained with the microbiological assay of chloramphenicol.
Result: The final product of the two step reaction was greenish – yellow in colour,, absorbed strongly in the visible region and obeyed Beer’s law at max = 440 nm. The method developed was sensitive and accurately determined chloramphenicol in the presence of common excipients and in different dosage forms. There was statistically no significant difference (p < 0.05) between the results with the method developed and those obtained with the microbiological assay of chloramphenicol.
Conclusion: A simple, fast, cheap, precise, sensitive and accurate colorimetric method has been developed that could be routinely used for the determination of chloramphenicol in bulk drug and in different dosage forms. The advantage of the method is its speed and simplicity.

Keywords: Chloramphenicol, colorimetric assay, microbiological assay, p-dimethylaminobenzaldehyde.