Rapid determination of corticosteroids in pharmaceuticals by flow injection analysis

The proposed method is based on the reduction of blue tetrazolium by the steroid in an alkaline medium to form a highly colored formazan. The effects of reagent concentration, temperature, flow rate, and manifold design on the reaction are discussed for a typical steroid, methylprednisolone acetate. Analytical readout is obtained within 30 s after sample introduction and up to 100 samples/h can be processed with baseline resolution between peaks. Typical relative standard deviations of 0.5% are obtained with 10-μ1 injection volumes. Results obtained by flow injection analysis are similar to those obtained with the AutoAnalyzer technique.