Validated derivative and ratio derivative spectrophotometric methods for the simultaneous determination of levocetirizine dihydrochloride and ambroxol hydrochloride in pharmaceutical dosage form

•Simultaneous determination of levocetirizine and ambroxol was investigated.•The proposed spectrophotometric methods were statistically validated.•The methods were applied in commercial tablets with high accuracy.•Methods can be used for quality control analysis due to lack of extraction procedures.

Three simple, precise, accurate and validated derivative spectrophotometric methods have been developed for the simultaneous determination of levocetirizine dihydrochloride (LCD) and ambroxol hydrochloride (ABH) in bulk powder and in pharmaceutical formulations. The first method is a first derivative spectrophotometric method (1D) using a zero-crossing technique of measurement at 210.4 nm for LCD and at 220.0 nm for ABH. The second method employs a second derivative spectrophotometry (2D) where the measurements were carried out at 242.0 and 224.4 nm for LCD and ABH, respectively. In the third method, the first derivative of the ratio spectra was calculated and the first derivative of the ratio amplitudes at 222.8 and 247.2 nm was selected for the determination of LCD and ABH, respectively. Calibration graphs were established in the ranges of 1.0–20.0 μg mL− 1 for LCD and 4.0–20.0 μg mL− 1 for ABH using derivative and ratio first derivative spectrophotometric methods with good correlation coefficients. The developed methods have been successfully applied to the simultaneous determination of both drugs in commercial tablet dosage form.

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