NEW SPECTROPHOTOMETRIC REAGENTS FOR THE DETERMINATION OF CERTAIN DIBENZAZEPINE DRUGS

Two spectrophotometric methods which are simple, sensitive and accurate for the determination of certain dibenzazepine class of drugs have been developed. the methods are based on the reaction of imipramine hydrochloride (iph), desipramine hydrochloride (dph), clomipramine hydrochloride (cph), trimipramine maleate (tpm) or opipramol (opp) with iron(iii) and subsequent complexation with 1,10- phenanthroline and bathophenanthroline in an acetic acid medium to yield orange-red or pink coloured product with maximum absorption at 510 and 530 nm, respectively. the commonly encountered excipients and additives along with the drug do not interfere with the determination. dibenzazepine drugs can be determined in the range of 200-3000 ng ml^-1 with a relative standard deviation of 1.20% and 1.64% with 1,10-phenanthroline and bathophenanthroline, respectively. results of the analysis of some pre formulations and commercial tablets (depranil, clofranil and surmontil for iph, cph and tpm respectively) by this procedure agree well with those of the official methods.