Penicillins, a kind of β-lactam antibiotics, are active on sensitive gram-positive and gram-negative organisms. Many analytical procedures have been reported for their determination. The Chinese Pharmacopoeia (2nd ed., 2000) recommends HPLC or titration assays for their dosages. 1 Other reported methods include: spectrophotometry, 2-4 mercurimetric titration, 5 NMR, 6 HPLC, 7-10 and HPLC-APCI-MS.
11There have been a few reports on chemiluminescence (CL) methods for the determination of penicillins. Jingshun et al. described a CL method for the determination of penicillin G with a linear range of 0.01 -0.1 mg/ml and dicloxacillin with a linear range of 0.2 -1.0 mg/ml. 12 It was based on the CL reaction of penicillins with potassium superoxide dissolved by 18-crown-6-ether. Kubo et al. described a flow-injection CL method for the determination of β-lactam antibiotics, which was based on CL directly produced by the reaction of luminol with β-lactam antibiotics in the presence of a catalyst in an alkaline solution. The method allowed the determination of penicillin G in linear range of 0.12 -6.0 mg/ml with a detection limit of 12 µg/ml.
13The present article describes a simple flow injection CL method for the determination of four penicillins: phenoxymethylpenicillin potassium, amoxicillin, ampicillin, and ampicillin sodium. The method is based on an enhancing effect of penicillins on the CL reaction of glyoxal with KMnO4 in sulfuric acid. The experimental conditions for the reaction were optimized, and the final procedure allowed a successful determination of the studied drugs in pharmaceutical preparations.
Experimental
Reagents and chemicalsAll of the reagents were of analytical reagent grade, and doubly distilled water was used to prepare all solutions. Phenoxymethylpenicillin potassium, amoxicillin, ampicillin, and ampicillin sodium standard samples were purchased from National Institute for the Control of Pharmaceutical and Biological Products (Beijing, China). KMnO4 was obtained from Xi'an Chemical Reagent Factory (Xi'an, China). Glyoxal was provided by Department of Chemistry of Xi'an Jiaotong University (Xi'an, China). The 1.0 mg/ml standard solutions of phenoxymethylpenicillin potassium, amoxicillin, ampicillin, and ampicillin sodium were freshly prepared by dissolving 250 mg of each in water and diluting with water to 250 ml. The working solutions were prepared by appropriate dilution of these standard solutions with water before being used. A KMnO4 solution 1.0 × 10 -3 mol/l was prepared by diluting an appropriate 0.1 mol/l stock solution in 1.3 mol/l H2SO4. A glyoxal solution (0.05 mol/l) was prepared from a 1 mol/l stock solution.
InstrumentsThe flow system used for the determination and CL detection for the studied penicillins is shown schematically in Fig. 1. One peristaltic pump (two channels) was used to drive KMnO4 in sulfuric acid and glyoxal solutions. Another peristaltic pump was used to deliver the sample solution. Each pump was run at with a constant flow rate of 2.75 ml/min. PTFE tubing (0.8...