Spectrophotometric Determination of Citalopram in Pharmaceutical Formulations

An accurate, simple and reproducible spectrophotometric method for the determination of citalopram hydrobromide either in pure form or pharmaceutical formulations has been developed. The drug was extracted from formulations with chloroform in an alkaline medium and reacted with 7, 7, 8, 8-tetracyanoquinodimethane (TCNQ) as pi-acceptor to give a colored complex, which absorbs maximally at 570 nm. Beer s law was obeyed in the concentration range 8- 240 mug ml^-1 with molar absorptivity of 4.2 × 10^3 L mole^-1 cm^-1. Effect of different variables was studied and conditions were optimized. Results have also been validated statistically. The proposed method has been found to be sensitive, rapid, accurate and precise for the quantitative determination of citalopram hydrobromide in raw and dosage forms without interferences from commonly used excipients.