Spectrophotometric determination of piroxicam and tenoxicam in pharmaceutical formulations using alizarin.

New spectrophotometric procedures have been established for the quantitation of piroxicam and tenoxicam. The procedures are based on the reaction between the examined drug and alizarin (I), alizarin red S (II), alizarin yellow G (III) or quinalizarin (IV) producing ion-pair complexes which can be measured at the optimum wavelength. The optimization of the reaction conditions is investigated. Beer's law is obeyed in the concentration ranges 0.05-2.40 microg ml(-1), whereas optimum concentration as adopted from Ringbom plots was 0.12-2.25 microg ml(-1). The molar absorptivity, Sandell sensitivity, detection and quantification limits are also calculated. The correlation coefficient was >/=0.9990 (n=10) with a relative standard deviation (R.S.D.) of </=1.2, for ten determinations of 1.0 microg ml(-1). The methods are successfully applied to the determination of piroxicam and tenoxicam in their pharmaceutical formulations.