Determination of the active ingredient amounts of expired albendazole drugs

In this study, it was aimed to determine the active ingredient amounts of 24 expired and 3 unexpired antiparasitic drugs containing the active ingredient albendazole using UV-Vis and RP-HPLC techniques. The drugs were prepared using methanol (MeOH) and 1 N HCl (70:30, v/v) mixture. The quantitative analyses of albendazole were carried out at 338 nm in the range of 1.562-75 µg mL-1 (R2=0.9997) in UV-Vis. In RP-HPLC, separations were achieved using Nucleosil 100-5, C18 column (250 x 4.6 mm, 5µm) in isocratic elution. 0.02 M phosphate buffer (pH 3.0) and MeOH mobile phase (30:70, v/v) were used at a flow rate of 1.0 mL min-1. Detections were conducted in the same concentration range (R2=0.9998) using a PDA detector (210 nm). The results obtained using both techniques were evaluated by taking into account the studies in the literature. In this study, it was determined that the loss of active ingredient in veterinary drugs containing different albendazole active ingredient examined decreased over time and that some drugs containing albendazole active ingredient on the market may have less active ingredient amount than the acceptable limit values.