Differential Pulse Voltammetric Studies on Lamivudine: An Antiretroviral Drug

Abstract

Lamivudine (also known as 3TC) is a dideoxynucleoside analogue, which undergoes intracellular phosphorylation in the putative active metabolite, lamivudine triphosphate. Lamivudine triphosphate prevents HIV replication by competitively inhibiting viral reverse transcriptase. Lamivudine has been extensively used in the treatment of HIV patients owing to its antiretroviral activity. For the determination of lamivudine in pharmaceuticals, an analytical methodology using voltammetry was developed. Lamivudine was reduced at a hanging mercury drop electrode (HMDE) at-1.16 V vs Ag/AgCl at pH 2.0. The influence of electroanalytical parameters such as scan rate (20 mV·s-1), amplitude (50 mV), nature of the support electrolyte (Clark-Lubs), and pH (2.0) on the voltammetric signal was optimized. Under these optimized conditions, the method had been validated using pharmaceutical formulations. The lamivudine peak current varied linearly with its concentration from 1.15 to 10.40 mg·L-1 , detection and determination limits of 0.46 and 1.0 mg·L-1 , respectively, and recovery of 95.15% with a relative standard deviation of 1.10%.