Exploiting steroid-cyclodextrin complexes for selective determination of Estradiol Valerate and Norethisterone Acetate by synchronous fluorescence spectrofluorimetry.

Inclusion complexes of ß-cyclodextrin with Estradiol valerate (EST) or Norethisterone acetate (NOR) have been utilized for synchronous fluorescence spectrofluorimetry. ß-cyclodextrin improves fluorescence intensity as well as water solubility of the studied drugs. Samples in aqueous medium adjusted with ammonia were used in synchronous fluorescence to resolve the overlapped emission spectra. The effects of ß-cyclodextrin concentration and Δ λ have been optimized for sensitive and selective analysis of EST and NOR binary mixture. Synchronous fluorescence intensity of the two drugs is measured at Δ λ of 70 nm. EST and NOR can be simultaneously determined at 230 nm and 270 nm, respectively. Calibration curves were linear over the ranges of 0.5-6.0 µg mL-1 and 0.2-2.0 µg mL-1 for EST and NOR, respectively. Official guidelines were followed to estimate the validation parameters of the proposed method. The detection limits were 0.08 µg mL-1 for EST and 0.007 µg mL-1 for NOR. The proposed method was successfully used for the analysis of EST and NOR in their commercial preparations and the obtained results revealed statistical agreement with those obtained by application of the reported method for both drugs. The proposed method is compared favorably to previously published method in terms of simplicity and hazardous solvent consumption.

The Primodos components Norethisterone acetate and Ethinyl estradiol induce developmental abnormalities in zebrafish embryos.

Primodos was a hormone pregnancy test used between 1958-1978 that has been implicated with causing a range of birth defects ever since. Though Primodos is no longer used, it's components, Norethisterone acetate and Ethinyl estradiol, are used in other medications today including treatments for endometriosis and contraceptives. However, whether Primodos caused birth defects or not remains controversial, and has been little investigated. Here we used the developing zebrafish embryo, a human cell-line and mouse retinal explants to investigate the actions of the components of Primodos upon embryonic and tissue development. We show that Norethisterone acetate and Ethinyl estradiol cause embryonic damage in a dose and time responsive manner. The damage occurs rapidly after drug exposure, affecting multiple organ systems. Moreover, we found that the Norethisterone acetate and Ethinyl estradiol mixture can affect nerve outgrowth and blood vessel patterning directly and accumulates in the forming embryo for at least 24 hrs. These data demonstrate that Norethisterone acetate and Ethinyl estradiol are potentially teratogenic, depending on dose and embryonic stage of development in the zebrafish. Further work in mammalian model species are now required to build on these findings and determine if placental embryos also are affected by synthetic sex hormones and their mechanisms of action.