The first spectrofluorimetric approach for quantification of colistin sulfate and its prodrug colistimethate sodium in pharmaceutical dosage form and human plasma.

A new, accurate, nonextractive, and sensitive fluorimetric approach was proposed and validated for the first time estimation of colistin sulfate and its inactive prodrug colistimethate sodium in its bulk form, pharmaceutical formulations, and human plasma. The approach relied on condensation between acetylacetone/formaldehyde and the primary amino moiety of nonfluorescent colistin in Teorell and Stenhagen buffer (pH 2.8) by the Hantzsch reaction to form a highly fluorescent dihydropyridine derivative. The fluorescent product was measured at 460 nm (λex  = 402 nm). A plot of relative fluorescence intensity (RFI) versus concentration was rectilinear over the range 200-4000 ng ml-1 with excellent correlation (r) and determination (r2 ) coefficients of 0.9999 and 0.9998, respectively. The limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantitation (LOQ) were 40.91 and 123.99 ng ml-1 , respectively. The present procedure was useful for determination of colistin sulfate either in powder form for suspension or in its parenteral prodrug colistimethate sodium in vial formulation. The investigated approach was applied for in vitro quantification of this drug in spiked human plasma, with a per cent mean recovery of 98.24 ± 1.34. The proposed method is reliable, selective, and does not require tedious sample pretreatment steps, expensive instrumentation, or harmful reagents, all of which make it ideally suited for use in quality control laboratories.