Sensitive Extractive Spectrophotometric Methods for the Determination of Nortriptyline Hydrochloride in Pharmaceutical Formulations

Two simple, sensitive and rapid extractive spectrophotometric methods have been developed for the assay of the antidepressant drug nortriptyline (NOR) hydrochloride in pure form and in different dosage forms. The methods involve the formation of colored ion-pairs between the drug and the complex of niobium(V)-thiocyanate (Nb-SCN) or iron(III)-thiocyanate (Fe-SCN) followed by their extraction with butanol or a mixture of butanol and chloroform and quantitative determination at 360 nm and 490 nm, using Nb-SCN and Fe-SCN, respectively. The experimental conditions were optimized to obtain the maximum colour intensity. The methods permit the determination of nortriptyline over a concentration range of 15-100μg/ml and 5-24μg/ml with the detection limit of 0.84μg/ml and 0.32μg/ml, using Nb-SCN and Fe-SCN, respectively. The proposed methods are applicable for the assay of the investigated drug in different dosage forms and the results are in good agreement with those obtained by the official and HPLC methods. No interference was observed from common excipients present in pharmaceutical formulations. The proposed procedures were applied to determine the amount of nortriptyline hydrochloride as active ingredient in the presence of its degradation product, dibenzosuberone. The extractive spectrophotometric methods can also be used to determine the amount of nortriptyline hydrochloride in tablets after its solid phase extraction (SPE).