Abstract
Pharmaceutical drugs are available to astronauts to help them overcome the deleterious effects of weightlessness, sickness and injuries. Unfortunately, recent studies have shown that some of the drugs currently used may degrade more rapidly in space, losing their potency before their expiration dates. To complicate matters, the degradation products of some drugs can be toxic. Here, we present a preliminary investigation of the ability of Raman spectroscopy to quantify mixtures of four drugs; acetaminophen, azithromycin, epinephrine, and lidocaine, with their primary degradation products. The Raman spectra for the mixtures were replicated by adding the pure spectra of the drug and its degradant to determine the relative percent contributions using classical least squares. This multivariate approach allowed determining concentrations in ~10 min with a limit of detection of ~4% of the degradant. These results suggest that a Raman analyzer could be used to assess drug potency, nondestructively, at the time of use to ensure crewmember safety.
Highlights
Astronauts suffer from a number of maladies caused by long-term weightlessness and radiation exposure, such as space motion sickness (SMS), cephalad fluid shifts, sleep deprivation, reduced immune response, and loss of bone and muscle mass [1,2,3,4,5,6]
We present a preliminary investigation of the ability of Raman spectroscopy to quantify mixtures of four drugs; acetaminophen, azithromycin, epinephrine, and lidocaine, with their primary degradation products
Four drugs representative of the medications used by NASA astronauts were selected for study: acetaminophen, azithromycin, lidocaine, and epinephrine (Figure 1)
Summary
Astronauts suffer from a number of maladies caused by long-term weightlessness and radiation exposure, such as space motion sickness (SMS), cephalad fluid shifts, sleep deprivation, reduced immune response, and loss of bone and muscle mass [1,2,3,4,5,6]. There is a need for an analyzer to measure both the API concentration and its degradation products in spaceflights Such an analyzer would have immediate value in its ability to assess the potency of a drug at the time of use to ensure crewmember safety. Raman spectroscopy has been successfully used to verify contents of drugs within their packaging [22], measure the composition and uniformity of drug pills [24,25,26,27,28,29], identify street drugs [30,31], and determine drug authenticity [32] Based on these successes, we present a preliminary investigation of the ability of Raman spectroscopy to quantify mixtures of four drugs; acetaminophen, azithromycin, epinephrine, and lidocaine, with their primary degradation products. We limit the analysis to each API and its primary degradant to demonstrate the basis of this approach
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