Comparative Study on the Determination of Cephalexin in its Dosage Forms by Spectrophotometry and HPLC with UV-vis Detection

This paper discusses the spectrophotometric determination of cephalexin as the intact cephalexin or as its acid-induced degradation product. Cephalexin can be determined in the range 1 × 10−5−18 × 10−5M with relative standard deviations of 5-1%. The limits of quantitation and detection were 10−5 and 0.3 × 10−5M, respectively. These procedures were compared with reversed-phase HPLC determination. No interference was observed in the presence of common pharmaceutical adjuvants. The H-point standard additions method was applied in order to correct for the possible presence of the cephalexin precursor, 7-aminocephalosporanic acid; this improves the selectivity of the UV-vis spectrophotometric me…