A facile on-off fluorescence approach for fluvoxamine determination in pharmaceutical tablets; application to content uniformity testing

A green-complied spectrofluorimetric approach for quantification of the antidepressant, fluvoxamine, has been established. The method that has been suggested relies on the development of an association complex between fluvoxamine and erythrosine B in an acetate buffer solution. After being excited at 530 nm, the quenching in erythrosine B's native fluorescence caused by complex formation with fluvoxamine was detected at a wavelength of 552 nm. The values of fluorescence quenching at the most optimal reaction conditions were rectilinear at the concentration range of 0.2-2.0 mu g mL-1, with a good correlation coefficient (r = 0.9998). The detection limit for the method was 0.03 mu g mL-1 while the quantitation limit was 0.09 mu g mL-1. The suggested approach has been validated according to the ICH. The established approach was effectively used to determine the drug under study in its dosage form with an average percent recovery of 98.92 +/- 0.87 (n = 5), with no effect caused by the existing excipients. The proposed approach was also successfully used for the content uniformity test. Ion pair complex formation between fluvoxamine and erythrosine B dye quench the fluorescence of the dye in a concentration dependent profile.