New Kinetic Spectrophotometric Method for Determination of Folic Acid in Pharmaceutical Formulations

A simple and sensitive kinetic spectrophotometric method has been developed for the determination of folic acid (FA) in bulk and pharmaceutical Formulations. The method is based on the oxidation of FA by Fe (III) in sulfuric acid medium. Fe (III) subsequently reduces to Fe (II) which is coupled with potassium ferricyanide to form Prussian blue. The reaction is followed spectrophotometrically by measuring the increase in absorbance at λmax 725 nm. The rate data and fixed time methods were adopted for constructing the calibration curves. The linearity range was found to be 1–20 μg mL-1 for each method. The correlation coefficient was 0.9978 and 0.9993, and LOD was found to be 0.91 and 0.09 μg mL-1 for rate data and fixed time methods, respectively. The proposed method has been successfully applied to the determination of FA in formulations with no interference from the excipients. Statical comparison of the results shows that there is no significant difference between the proposed and pharmacopoeial methods