Selective Spectrophotometric and Spectrofluorometric Methods for the Determination of Amantadine Hydrochloride in Capsules and Plasma via Derivatization with 1,2-Naphthoquinone-4-sulphonate

New selective and sensitive spectrophotometric and spectrofluorometric methods have been developed and validated for the determination of amantadine hydrochloride (AMD) in capsules and plasma. The methods were based on the condensation of AMD with 1,2-naphthoquinone-4-sulphonate (NQS) in an alkaline medium to form an orange-colored product. The spectrophotometric method involved the measurement of the colored product at 460 nm. The spectrofluorometric method involved the reduction of the product with potassium borohydride, and the subsequent measurement of the formed fluorescent reduced AMD-NQS product at 382 nm after excitation at 293 nm. The variables that affected the reaction were carefully studied and optimized. Under the optimum conditions, linear relationships with good correlation coefficients (0.9972-0.9974) and low LOD (1.39 and 0.013 mug mL(-1)) were obtained in the ranges of 5-80 and 0.05-10 mug mL(-1) for the spectrophotometric and spectrofluorometric methods, respectively. The precisions of the methods were satisfactory; RSD </=2.04%. Both methods were successfully applied to the determination of AMD in capsules. As its higher sensitivity, the spectrofluorometric method was applied to the determination of AMD in plasma; the recovery was 96.3-101.2 +/- 0.57-4.2%. The results obtained by the proposed methods were comparable with those obtained by the official method.