Sensitive spectrofluorimetric and spectrophotometric methods for the determination of thonzylamine hydrochloride in pharmaceutical preparations based on coupling with dimethylbarbituric acid in presence of dicyclohexylcarbodiimide.

Two sensitive and selective spectrophotometric and spectrofluoimetric procedures were developed for the determination of thonzylamine hydrochloride (THAH) in tablets and nasal drops. The methods are based on König reaction which resulted in an orange-yellow fluorescent product. The orange-yellow product of the interaction between the dicyclohexylcarbodiimide (DCC), THAH and dimethylbarbituric acid (DMBA) showed an absorption maximum at 492 nm, a first-derivative signal at 494 nm and a fluorescence emission peak at 518 nm (lambda(ex)=492 nm). The orange-yellow color was found to be stable for at least 2 h. The reaction conditions were studied and optimized. The reaction obeys Beer's law over the ranges 8-20 and 0.2-2.0 microg ml(-1) for the derivative spectrophotometric and fluorimetric measurements, respectively. The detection limits were found to be 0.29 and 0.018 microg ml(-1) for the spectrophotometric and fluorimetric measurements, respectively. The proposed methods were applied to the analysis of pharmaceutical formulations containing THAH, either alone or in combination with naphazoline nitrate.