Indirect flow-injection spectrophotometric determination of meloxicam, tenoxicam and piroxicam in pharmaceutical formulations.

A simple and sensitive indirect spectrophotometric method for the assay of meloxicam (MX), tenoxicam (TX) and piroxicam (PX) in pure and in pharmaceutical formulations by flow injection analysis (FIA) has been proposed. The method is based on the oxidation of these drugs by a known excess of N-bromosuccinimide (NBS) in an acidic medium, followed by a reaction of excess oxidant with chloranilic acid (CAA) to bleach its purple color. The absorbance values increased linearly with increasing concentrations of the drugs. Variables, such as the acidity, reagent concentrations, flow rate of reagents and other FI parameters were optimized to produce the most sensitive and reproducible results. The system obeyed Beer's low over concentration ranges of 10 - 160, 20 - 200 and 10 - 160 microg/ml for MX, TX and PX, respectively. The common excipients and additives did not interfere with their determinations. The method was successfully applied to the determinations of MX, TX and PX in various pharmaceutical preparations. The results obtained by the proposed method were found to be in good agreement with those found by the official HPLC methods.