New Spectrophotometric Methods for Determination of Albendazole in Presence of Cerium as Oxidant and Both Indigo Carmine and Alizarin Red Dyes in Bulk and Dosage Forms

Albendazole (ABZ), chemically known as methyl5-(propylthio)-2-benzimidazole carbamate [1] (Fig. 1), is widely used as an anthelmintic with a broad spectrum of activity [2]. ABZ is an inactive moiety but it readily gets metabolized to an active metabolite, albendazole sulfoxide (ABZSO) which is then further metabolized to an inactive metabolite, albendazole sulfone (ABZSO2) [3]. As ABZ is metabolized extensively, therefore, the plasma concentration of ABZ is also very low, as a result, the pharmacokinetic studies were done using ABZSO as an active metabolite and ABZSO2 as an inactive metabolite [4-8]. As such, the therapeutic importance of this compound justifies research to develop analytical methods for its determination in bulk form, pharmaceutical formulations and in biological samples. Several techniques can be found in the literature for monitoring ABZ therapy such as UV-vis spectrophotometry [9-12], spectroflourimetry [13], HPLC [14], HPTLC [15], LC/MS [16], capillary electrophoresis [17] and voltammetry [18].