Simple spectrophotometric methods for determination of fluoxetine and clomipramine hydrochlorides in dosage forms and in some post-mortem biological fluids samples

Sensitive, simple and rapid spectrophotometric methods for micro determination of fluoxetine hydrochloride (FLU) and clomipramine hydrochloride (CLO). The methods are based on the reaction between the examined drugs and acid dyes, namely; bromocresol green (BCG), phenol red (PhR) and metanil yellow (MY) producing yellow ion-pair complexes followed by their extraction with methylene chloride and measured at 412, 407 and 409 nm for FLU with BCG, PhR and MY, respectively; whereas for CLO at 409, 406 and 407 nm, respectively. All variables that affect the performance of the proposed methods were carefully studied and optimized. Beer's law was obeyed in the concentration ranges 0.86-24.32 μg/mL, 8.64-41.30 μg/mL, 0.86-34.76 μg/mL for FLU and 1.75-24.55 μg/mL, 7.0-50 μg/mL, 1.65-34.78 μg/mL for CLO using BCG, PhR and MY respectively. The methods were validated in terms of accuracy and precision. The proposed methods were successfully applied to the determination of fluoxetine hydrochloride and clomipramine hydrochloride in pure samples, pharmaceutical formulations, spiked post-mortem urine and blood samples.