Fluoroquinolones are a crucial class of antibiotics, prescribed frequently worldwide for the treatment of various infections. Their stability studies still require considerable attention, as they are prone to rapid degradation. In this work, we aim to provide a straightforward, facile, yet reliable approach for stability studies of ciprofloxacin, a prominent member of this class, using a UV-Visible spectrophotometer. Ciprofloxacin was degraded by adopting a forced degradation approach under acidic (HCl, HNO₃, H₂SO₄, H₃PO₄), basic (NaOH, KOH, Na₂CO_3, and NH₃), and peroxides (H₂O₂) environments at ambient temperature (4°C, 26°C and 60°C) for 120 min, at 278 nm following ICH guidelines. The developed method exhibits linear regression and correlation coefficients of 0.99976, 0.99980, and 0.99940 for acids, bases, and peroxides, indicating close least squares lines obtained from experimental data. The percent drug recovery calculated indicates that ciprofloxacin degrades optimally with acids (65.67-53.39%) compared to bases (81.47-61.19%) and peroxides (80.96-75.24%), independent of temperature and concentration variations within studied period (120 min). Therefore, the developed method is applicable for analyzing and studying the stability of ciprofloxacin under stress conditions.

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