Spectrophotometric analysis of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors based on formation of charge-transfer complexes with tetracyanoquinodimethane and chloranilic acid

A simple, accurate, and sensitive spectrophotometric method for analysis of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) has been developed and validated. The analysis was based on the formation of colored charge-transfer complexes between the intact molecule of SSRI drug as an n-electron donor and each of tetracyanoquinodimethane (TCNQ) or p-chloranilic acid (pCA) as electron acceptors. The formed complexes were measured spectrophotometrically at 842 and 520 nm for TCNQ and pCA, respectively. Different variables and parameters affecting the reactions were studied and optimized. Under the optimum reaction conditions, linear relationships with good correlation coefficients (0.9975-0.9996) were found between the absorbances and the concentrations of the investigated drugs in the concentration ranges of 4-50 and 20-400 μg/mL with TCNQ and pCA, respectively. With all the investigated drugs, TCNQ gave more sensitive assays than pCA; the limits of assay detection were 2.5-4.8 and 20-40 μg/mL with TCNQ and pCA, respectively. The intra- and interassay precisions were satisfactory; the relative standard deviations did not exceed 2%. The proposed procedures were successfully applied to the analysis of the studied drugs in pure form and pharmaceutical formulations with good accuracy; the recovery values were 98.4-102.8 ± 1.24-1.81%. The results obtained from the proposed method were statistically comparable with those obtained from the previously reported methods.