Spectrophotometric determination of favipiravir in presence of its acid hydrolysis product

Favipiravir (FAV) has been approved as an antiviral drug used in pandemic corona virus to treat covid-19. It has an amide moiety susceptible to hydrolysis and degradation in acid medium. Therefore, four simple, sensitive, and accurate stability indicating spectrophotometric methods have been developed for the determination of FAV in presence of its acid induced degradation product. The first method describes direct determination of FAV at 323 nm. Dual wavelength method was the second developed one for FAV quantitation by recording the absorbance difference at 322.7 and 270 nm. The third method involves using first derivative peak to peak amplitude at 338.0 and 308.0 nm, while difference spectrophotometry was the fourth suggested method, and it was based on recording the spectral changes at 361.3 nm as pH changes. The obtained calibration curves were linear over 4.0–22.0 µg/mL. Accuracy of the suggested procedures ranged from 99.11 to100.06, while precision results were from 0.80 to1.68. The developed methods were used to determine FAV in pure powdered form, laboratory-prepared mixtures with their degradation product, and pharmaceutical formulation without interference from its acidic degradation product.The greenness was assessed based on GAPI and ACREE metric and was found to be compatible and in reconciliation with green analytical chemistry concepts. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT: [Image: see text] SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13065-023-01046-6.