Determination of cefuroxime axetil in tablets and biological fluids using liquid chromatography and flow injection analysis

Cefuroxime axetil is the pro-drug of cephalosporin cefuroxime that is used in the treatment of common community-acquired infections. A simple and precise liquid chromatographic method for the determination of cefuroxime axetil in pharmaceutical tablets, human serum and urine has been developed and validated. Cefuroxime axetil and indapamide (internal standard) were separated by a reversed phase column (Supelco Hypersil 5 μm, 150 mm × 4.6 mm i.d., C18) using a mobile phase consisting of KH2PO4 (0.1 M) and acetonitrile (70:30 v/v) (at pH 4.0). The mobile phase was pumped at 1.0 mL min−1 flow rate and cefuroxime axetil was detected by ultraviolet detection at 281 nm within an average analysis time of 11 min. Flow injection analysis was performed for pharmaceutical tablet analysis using a carrier stream of methanol:water (10:90 v/v) with a flow rate of 1.0 mL min−1. The LOD and LOQ concentrations of the HPLC method were 1.35 × 10−7 and 4.08 × 10−7 M for the HPLC analysis and 1.31 × 10−7 and 4.00 × 10−7 M for FIA. The results of the analysis of the tablet formulation obtained by using these methods were statistically comparable with each other and with an additional spectrophotometric method. There was no significant difference between all these methods.