New, simple and validated UV-spectrophotometric methods for the estimation of sodium usnate in preparations

New, simple, cost effective, accurate and reproducible UV-spectrophotometric methods were developed and validated for the estimation of sodium usnate in pharmaceutical preparations. Sodium usnate was estimated at 290 nm in water and phosphate buffer (pH 3):methanol (11:20 V/V). Beer’s law was obeyed in the concentration range of 0.1–5 μg·cm−3 (r = 0.997) in water and 1–12 μg·cm−3 (r = 0.999) in the phosphate buffer:methanol. The apparent molar absorptivity and Sandell’s sensitivity coefficient were found to be 3.16×104 dm3·mol−1·cm−1 and 11.58 ng·cm–2/0.001 A in water and 3.72×104 dm3·mol−1·cm−1 and 9.83 ng·cm–2/0.001 A in phosphate buffer:methanol, respectively, indicating the high sensitivity of the proposed methods. These methods were tested and validated for various parameters according to ICH guidelines. The detection and quantitation limits were found to be 0.0721 and 0.2163 μg·cm–3 in water and 0.163, 0.489 μg·cm−3 in phosphate buffer:methanol, respectively. The proposed methods were successfully applied for the determination of sodium usnate in pharmaceutical preparations. The results demonstrated that the procedure is accurate, precise and reproducible (R.S.D. < 2 %).