Spectrofluorimetric determination of Acetylsalicylic acid and Codeine mixtures in pharmaceuticals

Acetylsalicylic acid (ASA) and Codeine (CO) are two active ingredients usua lly found together in pharmaceutical preparations. A lot of procedures for determination of ASA are based on its previous hydrolysis to salicylic acid (SA). In this paper a procedure for both direct determination of CO and in direct determination of ASA in pharmaceuticals is proposed based on the mea surements of the native fluorescence of CO and SA (obtained from hydrolysis of ASA). SA was determined in the range 0.1-1.5 mg/L in the presence up to 10 mg/L of CO at lambda (em) 405 nm (lambda (exc) = 297nm). CO could not b e determined at the low ratio usually found in pharmaceuticals with respect to ASA due to the spectral overlap, so a previous separation of SA was car ried out by retention of this on an anion exchange resin. Thus CO was deter mined in the range 0.1-3 mg/L (lambda (exc) = 215 nm, lambda (em) = 350 nm. ) in the presence of at least 520 mg/L of ASA. The procedures were applied to the determination of CO and ASA in commercial pharmaceuticals with goods results, using an HPLC procedure as a reference method.