The convenient use of fluorescamine for spectrofluorimetric quantitation of pramipexole in pure form and pharmaceutical formulation; application to content uniformity testing

Abstract

Pramipexole is a selective dopamine receptor agonist which is used in the treatment of Parkinson's disease and restless legs syndrome. The present work illustrates the development and validation of a sensitive and selective spectrofluorometric method for quantitation of pramipexole (PMP) through its interaction with fluorescamine at pH 7.5 using aqueous borate buffer to produce a highly fluorescent product. The fluorescent intensity of the formed product was measured at 480 nm after excitation at 391 nm. Experimental factors that could influence the formation, stability and the fluorescence intensity of the formed product were investigated and optimized. The linearity of the proposed method was achieved in the concentration range of 0.05–2.0 μg/mL. The quantitation and detection limits were 47 and 15 ng/mL, respectively. The proposed method has been validated in respect to guidelines of ICH and pharmaceutical tablets of PMP were successfully analyzed. Moreover, the method was applied for studying the content uniformity test according to the guidelines of United States Pharmacopeia.