Spectrophotometric and spectrofluorimetric determination of etodolac and aceclofenac

Two simple, sensitive and reproducible spectrophotometric and spectrofluorimetric methods were adopted for the analysis of the anti-inflammatory drugs, etodolac and aceclofenac. The first method is based on the formation of coloured complexes between the drugs and p-dimethylaminobenzaldehyde reagent (PDAB) in the presence of sulfuric acid and ferric chloride. Measurement of the absorbances was carried out at 591.5 and 545.5 nm for etodolac and aceclofenac, respectively. Regression analysis of Beer's plots showed good correlation in the concentration ranges 10-80 and 8-55 microg ml(-1), respectively. The second was the spectrofluorimetric method in which samples of etodolac in ethanol showed native fluorescence at a lambda = 345 nm when excitation was at 235 nm and samples of aceclofenac in the phosphate buffer pH 8 showed native fluorescence at lambda = 355 nm when excitation was at 250 nm. The calibration graph was rectilinear from 96 to 640 ng ml(-1) for etodolac and from 2 to 8 microg ml(-1) for aceclofenac. The proposed methods are applied successfully for the determination of the two drugs in bulk powder with a mean accuracy of 100.48+/-0.85 and 100.03+/-0.38 in the PDAB method and of 100.61+/-0.79 and 99.88+/-0.45 in the spectrofluorimetric method. Applicability of the proposed methods was examined by analysing dosage forms of the investigated drugs. Recoveries were 98.77-101.46 and 98.65-102.10% for the two methods, respectively and RSD values were 0.6-0.7 and 0.35-1.06% respectively.