A novel spectrophotometric determination of atenolol using sodium nitroprusside

Abstract

A simple, sensitive and new spectrophotometric method has been developed for determination of atenolol, a cardiovascular drug. Proposed method is based on deamination of atenolol in basic media, followed by addition of sodium nitroprusside to generate a coloured complex that absorbs at 495 nm. It gave following values: Beer’s law, 0.5-30 µg ml^-1; molar absorptivity, 3.01×10⁵l.mol^-1.cm^-1; limit of detection, 0.0107 µg ml^-1; and limit of quantification, 0.0358 µg ml^-1. It was successfully employed for determination of active ingredient concentration in commercial formulations of atenolol.