Spectrophotometric Determination of Metoclopramide Hydrochloride in Pharmaceutical Preparations by Charge Transfer Reaction with Metol

Abstract

A simple, rapid and sensitive spectrophotometric method was developed for the determination of metoclopramide hydrochloride (MPH) in pharmaceutical preparations. The method was based on the charge transfer reaction of MPH with metol in the presence of ferric sulfate to form red water soluble product with maximum absorbance at 505 nm. The reaction conditions were studied and optimized. The linear range for the determination of MPH, and the detection limit were 2 – 50 µg mL⁻¹ and 0.635 µg mL⁻¹, respectively. The effect of the substrates commonly employed as excipients with MPH have been studied. The proposed method has been applied successfully for the determination of MPH in pharmaceutical preparations. A statistical comparison of these results with those obtained by the British pharmacopoeia procedure using the Student t-test and variance ratio F-test shows a good agreement and indicates no significant difference in accuracy and precision at the 95% confidence.