Voltammetric reduction of finasteride at mercury electrode and its determination in tablets.

Finasteride in hydroalcoholic solutions (ethanol/Britton-Robinson buffer, 30/70) exhibits cathodic response in a wide range of pH (-0.5 to 12) using differential pulse (DPP) and test polarography (TP). The reduction peak of finasteride at acidic pH, is a catalytic proton peak resulting from a mechanism involving a first protonation of finasteride followed by the reduction of the protons combined with finasteride in order to regenerate finasteride and liberate hydrogen. Based on the catalytic hydrogen wave, a novel method for the determination of finasteride can be proposed. For analytical purposes we selected DPP technique in an ethanol/0.0625 mol L(-1) H(2)SO(4) (30/70) solution medium. In this condition the I(p) varied linearly with finasteride concentration between 5 x 10(-5) and 5 x 10(-4) mol L(-1). Within-day and inter-day reproducibility's were adequate with R.S.D. values lower than 2%. The selectivity of the method was checked with both accelerated degradation trials and typical excipients formulations. The developed method was applied to the assay and the uniformity content of finasteride tablets and compared with the standard HPLC method. The DPP-developed method was adequate for the finasteride determination in pharmaceutical forms as that exhibited an adequate accuracy, reproducibility and selectivity. Furthermore, treatment of the sample was not required as in HPLC; the method is not time-consuming and less expensive than the HPLC ones.