Utility of Von Pechman synthesis of coumarin reaction for development of spectrofluorimetric method for quantitation of salmeterol xinafoate in pharmaceutical preparations and human plasma

Abstract

Simple, precise and selective spectrofluorimetric technique was evolved for quantitation of selective β₂ agonist drug namely salmeterol xinafoate (SAL). Utilizing its phenolic nature, a method was described based on the reaction of the studied drug with ethyl acetoacetate (EAA) to yield extremely fluorescent coumarin product which can be detected at 480 nm (λ_ex = 420 nm). The procedure obeys Beer's law with a correlation coefficient of r = 0.9999 in the concentration range between 500 and 5000 ng ml^-1 with and 177 ng ml^-1 for limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantification (LOQ), respectively. Diverse reaction variables influencing the firmness and formation of the coumarin product were accurately examined and modified to ensure greatest sensitivity of the procedure. The proposed technique was performed and examined according to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) guidelines for bio-analytical methods and was efficiently applied for quantitation of SAL in both pharmaceutical preparations (% recovery = 100.06 ± 1.07) and spiked human plasma (% recovery = 96.64-97.14 ± 1.01-1.52).

Keywords: coumarin derivatives; human plasma; pharmaceutical analysis; spectrofluorimetry, salmeterol xinafoate.