Square-wave voltammetric determination of drospirenone and ethinylestradiol in pharmaceutical dosage form using square wave technique

Abstract

Cathodic voltammetric behaviors of drospirenone and ethinylestradiol were used for the simultaneous determination of both drugs in bulk and in pharmaceutical formulation (Yasmin® tablets) without the interference of excipients. The determinations were made on hanging mercury dropping electrode using square-wave technique in a voltammetric cell containing 10 mL of 0.04 mole/L Britton-Robinson. After every aliquot addition, the solution was stirred for 10 s at 1000 rpm, rested for 10 s then square wave voltammetry mode was ramped from +100 to -1700 mV with scan rate of 100 mV/s, pulse amplitude of 50 mV and measurement time of 5 ms. Several factors such as pH, type of supporting electrolyte, pulse amplitude and scan rate were studied to optimize the condition for voltammetric determination of these drugs. With optimized experimental parameters, a good linearity was obtained for both drugs over a range of 1.36×10^-6 to 1.91×10^-7 mole/L and 6.75×10^-8 to 6.07×10^-7 mol/L of drospirenone and ethinylestradiol, respectively. Characterization of the proposed method was done according to International Conference on Harmonization, Q2B: Validation of Analytical procedures. The proposed method was statistically compared with the reference method and the results revealed no significant difference regarding accuracy and precision.