Electrochemical studies of nevirapine, an anti-HIV drug, and its assay in tablets and biological samples

The electrochemical oxidation of nevirapine, an anti-HIV drug, at a glassy carbon electrode has been studied by voltammetric techniques. Nevirapine showed one well defined irreversible oxidation peak with a potential of 0.749 V in phosphate buffer at pH 10. The effects of different electrolytes, pH and scan rate on the electrochemical behaviour of nevirapine were examined to determine the optimum reaction conditions. The oxidation peak current was found to vary linearly with the concentration of nevirapine in the range of 5.0 – 350 μM. The limit of detection and limit of quantification values were calculated and found to be 1.026 μM and 3.420 μM, respectively. The low relative standard deviation values of inter-day and intra-day assays highlighted the good reproducibility of the proposed method for assay of nevirapine. Further, a sensitive and accurate differential pulse voltammetric method was developed for the determination of nevirapine concentrations in pharmaceutical formulations.