Spectrophotometric Determination of the Antidepressants Sertraline and Paroxetine HCl using 2,4-Dinitrofluorobenzene

A simple and sensitive spectrophotometric method was developed for the determination of each of sertraline (SER) and paroxetine HCl (PXT) in dosage forms. The method is based upon reaction of PXT and SER with 2,4-dinitrofluorobenzene (DNFB) to form colored products. The absorbance of the products were measured at 375and 390 nm for SER and PXT respectively. The absorbance concentration plots were rectilinear over the concentration rang of 1-10 and 2-20 μg/mL with lower detection limits (LOD) of 0.11 and 0.28 μg/mL and quantification limits (LOQ) of 0.32 and 0.85 μg/mL for SER and PXT, respectively. The developed method was successfully applied for the determination of SER and PXT in dosage forms. The common excipients and additives did not interfere in their determinations. There was no significant difference between the results obtained by the proposed and the reference methods regarding Student t-test and the variance ratio F-test respectively. A proposal of the reaction pathway was postulated.