Comparative study on the determination of cephalexin in its dosage forms by spectrophotometry and HPLC with UV-vis detection

This paper discusses the spectrophotometric determination of cephalexin as the intact cephalexin or as its acid-induced degradation product. Cephalexin can be determined in the range 1 × 10^–5–18 × 10^–5M with relative standard deviations of 5-1%. The limits of quantitation and detection were 10^–5 and 0.3 × 10^–5M, respectively. These procedures were compared with reversed-phase HPLC determination. No interference was observed in the presence of common pharmaceutical adjuvants. The H-point standard additions method was applied in order to correct for the possible presence of the cephalexin precursor, 7-aminocephalosporanic acid; this improves the selectivity of the UV-vis spectrophotometric method.