Voltammetric and spectrophotometric determination of nizatidine in pharmaceutical formulations

Two methods are described for quantitative determination of nizatidine. The first is a cathodic stripping voltammetric method which is based on the accumulation of the compound at the hanging mercury drop electrode. The adsorptive stripping response was evaluated with respect of accumulation time, potential, concentration, pH and other variables. A linear calibration graph was obtained over the range 3.0 × 10-8 - 1.0 × 10-6 M with a detection limit 3.0 × 10-8 M after a 20s accumulation time at -0.2 V accumulation potential. On the other hand, it was found that the detection limit could be lowered to 1.0 × 10-8 M after 180s accumulation time at -0.2 V accumulation potential. The relative standard deviation was in the range 1.2-2.0% for six measurements. The tolerance amounts of the common excipients have also been reported. The second is a spectrophotometric method which is based on the formation and extraction of the ion-pair complex formed between nizatidine and either bromocresol green or bromothymol blue. The extracted colored ion-pair complexes absorb at 416 nm. The effect of different factors such as: type of organic solvent, pH, reagent concentration, number of extraction times, shaking time, temperature and the tolerance amount of the common excipients have been reported. The calibration graph was linear in the range 6.0 × 10-7 - 1.8 × 10-5 M with a detection limit of 6.0 × 10-7 M and molar absorptivity of 2.1 × 104 1· mol-1 · cm-1 when using bromocresol green, while the calibration graph was linear in the range 3.0 × 10-7 - 1.1 × 10-5 M with a detection limit of 3.0 × 10-7 M and molar absorptivity of 3.2 × 104 1· mol-1 · cm-1 when using bromothymol blue. The spectrophotometric methods offer alternative methods with reasonable sensitivity, selectivity and accuracy with relative standard deviation in the range 2.1-6.0% and 1.2-4.7% (for six measurements) when using bromothymol blue and bromocresol green, respectively. The proposed two methods were applied for the determination of nizatidine in commercially available dosage forms. A comparison between the voltammetric and the extraction-spectrophotometric methods was also reported.