New and miniaturized method for analysis of enrofloxacin in palatable tablets

Abstract

Enrofloxacin is an antimicrobial for oral use, from the fluoroquinolones of second-generation class, and it is the first fluoroquinolone used in veterinary for the treatment of bacterial infections. The development of trustworthy analytical methods has extreme importance for the assurance of safety, quality and therapeutic efficiency of pharmaceuticals. Previous articles in the literature describe several analytical methods for evaluation of enrofloxacin, but they do not use spectrophotometry in the visible region, nor use a miniaturized method or ecologically correct. In this work an analytical method for quantification of enrofloxacin in palatable tablets for veterinary prescriptions was developed and validated by spectrophotometry in the visible region. This method used a spectrophotometer UV–Vis BMG LabTechSpectrostar Nano, solution of iron chloride 0.5% as complexing agent, microplates and the analyses were conducted at 430 nm. The validation was conducted following international guides and showed linearity between the concentrations of 100 and 200 μg/ mL, selectivity, precision (intraday RSD 0.52%, interday RSD 0.44% and interanalyst RSD 0.56%), accuracy of 98.51% and robustness to time of analysis variation and wavelength. Therefore, the developed method approached the required parameters of validation and can be considered suitable for quantification of enrofloxacin in palatable tablets. The method also involves characteristics in green analytical chemistry for the current pharmaceutical analysis. This work contemplates a miniaturized, clean, innovator, fast and low cost method by spectrophotometry in the visible region for quantification of enrofloxacin in palatable tablets.