Voltammetric determination of azithromycin at the carbon paste electrode.

Azithromycin (AZ) is the first member of a class of macrolide azalides antibiotics called azolides. A simple and selective square-wave voltammetric (SWV) method has been developed for the determination of azithromycin in pure form, in pharmaceutical preparation and in biological samples. Determination of azithromycin was accomplished with hand-make carbon paste electrode (CPE) in oxidative screen mode. The counter and reference electrodes were a Pt wire and a Ag/AgCl, respectively. Various parameters that can influence the peak signal (effect of buffer, ionic strength, accumulation time, pH and the composition of the paste) have been scrutinized. The best results were obtained in acetonitrile-aqueous 1M sodium acetate-acetic acid buffer (pH 4.6) containing 0.1M KCl (1:9; v/v) using a 15% paraffin oil CPE. The limits of detection and quantification of the pure drug are 0.463 and 1.544ppb (with the correlation coefficient, r=0.9785and the standard deviation, S.D.=0.1 (n=5), for the accumulation time of 60s), respectively. The method was successfully applied to the determination of the drug in urine and two forms of pharmaceutical formulations. Recoveries were 99.2-100.5% with S.D.=0.1-and 0.8% (n=5).