Kinetic spectrophotometric determination of atenolol in dosage forms.

A simple kinetic procedure is described for the determination of atenolol in its dosage forms. The procedure is based on coupling the drug with 4-chloro-7-nitrobenzo-2-oxa-1,3-diazole in pH 8 borate buffer at the boiling temperature for a fixed time of 30 min, and then measuring the absorbance of the reaction product at 460 nm. The absorbance-concentration plot is rectilinear over the range 5-50 microg/mL with a minimum detection limit of 1.3 microg (4.9 x 10(-6) M). The determination of atenolol by the fixed-concentration and rate-constant methods is also feasible with the calibration equations obtained, but the fixed-time method proved to be more applicable. The procedure was applied successfully to commercial tablets, and statistical analysis showed that the results compared favorably with those obtained by the official methods. The interference likely to be introduced from some coformulated drugs and the effect of sensitizers and surfactants on the performance of the proposed method were also studied. A proposed reaction pathway is presented.