Abstract
A simple kinetic spectrophotometric method has-been developed and validated for the quantitative analysis of N-acetyl L-cysteine. The I proposed Method is based on the oxidation of N-acetyl L-cysteine by potassium permanganate. The mechanism of the reaction was 1 studied and the reaction product was subjected to mass spectrometric analysis for characterization. By the spectral analysis it was concluded that the oxidation of N-acetyl L-cysteine resulted in the formation of a disulfides, sulfinic acid and sulphonic acid. Two methods, initial rate and fixed time were adopted to quantitate the drug. The method was Validated as per the ICH guidelines. The calibration graph obtained by the current methods was found to be linear in the range of 3.5-77 mu g mL(-1). The detection limit of the initial rate and the fixed time methods was calculated to be 8.5 x 10(-3) and 0456 respectively while the quantitation limit came out to be 2.59 x 10(-3) and 0.140, respectively for the initial rate and fixed time methods.