Abstract
Two spectrophotometric procedures are presented for the determination of three commonly used corticosteroid drugs. The procedures are based on the formation of the phenylhydrazones of the corticosteroids, which were subsequenly subjected to a charge-transfer complexation reaction with either the
σ
-acceptor iodine or the π-acceptor chloranil. The molar combining ratio and the optimum assay conditions were studied. Application of these procedures to the assay of the corticosteroids in tablet form is described. The mean recoveries were 99.26 ± 0.86, 99.67 ± 0.64 and 99.72 ± 1.39% using iodine as the acceptor reagent and 99.5 ± 0.78, 99.64 ± 0.62 and 99.9 ± 0.78% using chloranil as the acceptor reagent for prednisone, prednisolone and dexamethasone, respectively. The results obtained compared favourably with those obtained by the BP method.