Determination of ethanol content in medicated syrups by static headspace gas chromatography.

Liquid drug preparations are the most convenient for pediatric patients. Unfortunately, these formulations very often contain ethanol, which may have an impact on children development. Moreover, medicines containing alcohol may cause undesirable interactions in conjunction with other drugs. This work reports complete validated method for the quantitation of ethanol in commercial medicated syrups. For determination of ethanol headspace gas chromatography and different methods of quantitative analysis were used. The analyzed samples of commercial medicated syrups available on the home marked contained from 3.37 to 8.65% (v/v) of ethanol. The estimated theoretical values of blood ethanol concentration for children after single recommended dose ingestion were at least twice lower than 0.125 g/mL. The process of validation showed that the applied GC method is selective, sensitive, linear and precise. The use of internal standard makes it accurate. The developed method could be considered as an analytical tool for the quality control of various liquid drug preparations.