Abstract

Background: Azithromycin (AZT), an antimicrobial, despite having a monograph in official compendiums and some methods available in the literature, there is still a demand for eco-efficient methods, which include green analytical chemistry.

Objective: This study aimed to develop and validate a green spectrophotometric method for quantifying AZT tablets.

Methods: Purified water and ethanol (90:10, v/v) and sulfuric acid 20% as a diluent and reagent, respectively, quartz cubette and 482 nm were used. The Eco-Scale Assessment (ESA) tool was used to evaluate the greenness of the proposed analytical method.

Results: The proposed method was linear (20-70 μg mL^-1 with a correlation coefficient of 0.9984), precise (RSD < 5%), selective by sample adjuvants, exact (100.46%), and robust against changes in acid proportion and wavelength. The ESA calculation was 85 points.

Conclusion: The proposed method can be classified as an excellent green alternative to quantify AZT in tablets, in accordance with ESA.

Keywords: Azithromycin, tablets, spectrophotometry in the visible region, green analytical chemistry, eco-scale assessment, antimicrobial.