Abstract
A flow injection chemiluminescent (FI-CL) method was developed for the determination of pioglitazone HCl. It is based on the sensitizing effect of the drug on the oxidation reaction of sulfite with cerium(IV). The different experimental parameters affecting the chemiluminescence intensity, such as concentration of reagents and some physical parameters of the manifold, were carefully studied and incorporated into the procedure. The method permits the determination of 0.05 - 3.0 µg ml-1 of pioglitazone HCl with correlation coefficient r = 0.9999. The lower limit of detection (LOD) is 0.01 µg ml-1 (S/N = 2) and the lower limit of quantitation (LOQ) is 0.05 µg ml-1. The proposed method was compared with other reported methods and was found to be equally accurate and precise. It was successfully applied to the determination of the drug in pharmaceutical preparations and in biological fluids.