Mercurimetric Titration of Some Beta Lactam Antibiotics in Bulk and Pharmaceutical Products

A simple, sensitive and rapid method is described for the determination of some derivatives of beta lactam antibitics in bulk drug and in tablet dosage forms. In this method, ampicillin and amoxicillin are first degraded in 1 M NaOH medium for 20 min, acidified with nitric acid then titrated volumetrically with mercuric ions in the presence of few drops of diphenlycarbazone. The method is applicable over 0.3-2 μg/ml range of antibiotics and the stoichiometric reaction between antibiotic and mercury is found to be 2:3, respectively. Intra-day and inter-day precision and accuracy for the developed methods were evaluated. The method is successfully applied to the assay of antibiotics in capsule and injection formulations and the results were statistically compared with those of a reference method. No interference was observed from common capsule excipients.

Author(s): Hamad M. I. Hasan, Ibrahim H. Habib, and Suad K. Omar

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