Development and validation of spectrofluorimetric method for determination of haloperidol in pharmaceutical dosage forms

A simple, sensitive, and accurate spectrofluorimetric method has been developed for the determination of haloperidol in pharmaceutical preparations. The present method is based on the formation of an ion-pair complex between haloperidol and alizarin red S at pH 3.4 which is extractable with chloroform. The ion-pair complex exhibits maximum fluorescence intensity at 564 nm with excitation at 466 nm. The reaction conditions were optimized to obtain maximum fluorescence intensity. The relation between the fluorescence intensity and concentration was found to be linear over the range 0.8-20 mu g/mL with detection limit of 0.08 mu g/mL. The method was successfully employed for quantitation of the active ingredient haloperidol in pharmaceutical preparations. Statistical comparison of the results with the reference method shows excellent agreement and indicates no significant difference between the methods compared in terms of accuracy and precision. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.