Spectrophotometric determination of some anti-tussive and anti-spasmodic drugs through ion-pair complex formation with thiocyanate and cobalt(II) or molybdenum(V)

Two rapid, simple and sensitive extractive specrophotometric methods has been developed for the determination of anti-tussive drugs, e.g., dextromethorphan hydrobromide (DEX) and pipazethate hydrochloride (PiCl) and anti-spasmodic drugs, e.g., drotaverine hydrochloride (DvCl) and trimebutine maleate (TM) in bulk and in their pharmaceutical formulations. The proposed methods depend upon the reaction of cobalt(II)–thiocyanate (method A) and molybdenum(V)–thiocyanate ions (method B) with the cited drugs to form stable ion-pair complexes which extractable with an n-butnol–dichloromethane solvent mixture (3.5:6.5) and methylene chloride for methods A and B, respectively. The blue and orange red color complexes are determined either colorimetrically at λmax 625 nm (using method A) and 467 or 470 nm for (DEX and PiCl) or (DvCl and TM), respectively (using method B). The concentration range is 20–400 and 2.5–50 μg mL−1 for methods A and B, respectively. The proposed method was successfully applied for the determination of the studied drugs in pure and in pharmaceutical formulations applying the standard additions technique and the results obtained in good agreement well with those obtained by the official method.