Green adherent spectrophotometric determination of molnupiravir based on computational calculations; application to a recently FDA-approved pharmaceutical dosage form

Molnupiravir is an oral antiviral drug developed to provide significant benefit in reducing hospitalizations or deaths in mild COVID-19. Integrated green computational spectrophotometric method was developed for the determination of molnupiravir. Theoretical calculations were performed to predict the best coupling agent for efficient diazo coupling of molnupiravir. The binding energy between molnupiravir and various phenolic coupling agents, α-naphthol, β-naphthol, 8-hydroxyquinoline, resorcinol, and phloroglucinol, was measured using Gaussian 03 software based on the density functional theory method and the basis set B3LYP/6-31G(d). The results showed that the interaction between molnupiravir and 8-hydroxyquinoline was higher than that of other phenolic coupling agents. The method described was based on the formation of a red colored chromogen by the diazo coupling of molnupiravir with sodium nitrite in acidic medium to form a diazonium ion coupled with 8-hydroxyquinoline. The absorption spectra showed maximum sharp peaks at 515 nm. The reaction conditions were optimized. Beer's law was followed over the concentration range of 1-12 μg/ml molnupiravir. Job's continuous variation method was developed and the stoichiometric ratio of molnupiravir to 8-hydroxyquinoline was determined to be 1:1. The described method was successfully applied to the determination of molnupiravir in pure form and in pharmaceutical dosage form. The results showed that the proposed method has minimal environmental impact compared to previous HPLC method.

Application of ion pair complexes to design novel potentiometric membrane sensors for direct determination of frusemide in pharmaceuticals

Background

Fabrication of two membrane sensors using two acidic indicators among sulphonthalein dyes, namely bromophenol blue (BPB) and bromocresol green (BCG), and their use as indicative electrodes for the quantification of frusemide (FUR) is presented. The ion pair complexes of FUR with BPB or BCG are used to prepare the membranes in THF solvent, PVC matrix and dibutyl phthalate (DBP) as plasticizer and subsequently to fabricate FUR-BPB (Sensor I) and FUR-BCG (Sensor II) sensors.

Results

Sensors I and II are employable to determine 2.4 × 10-5–2.4 × 10-3 mol/L FUR at operative pH of 3.71. The calibration curve between the potentials against the concentration of FUR yielded the slopes of 58.73 ± 1 and 57.66 ± 1 mV/decade, respectively, using Sensors I and II, and this confirmed the Nernstian behaviour. Satisfactory correlation was obtained between the measured potentials and FUR concentration with the proposed sensors, and this was revealed by regression coefficient values of 0.9987 and 0.9980 for Sensors I and II, respectively. The LOD (limit of detection) values were calculated and reported for both the sensors. The experimental parameters were optimised to yield acceptable characteristics of both the sensors in the context of performance. The role of excipients of tablets and interferences were assessed by standard addition protocol. The obtained results confirmed the ineffective role of excipients of tablets and foreign species used as interferents.

Conclusion

The designed sensors were validated to confirm the accurate, precise, robust and rugged functioning in determining FUR. The mean of recovered FUR, close to 100%, revealed the acceptable and effective functioning of the proposed sensors. Excellent results were obtained by FUR tablets’ analysis using both the sensors.