Spider chart and whiteness assessment of synergistic spectrophotometric strategy for quantification of triple combination recommended in seasonal influenza – Detection of spurious drug

Abstract

Trimed Flu® Tablets are commonly specified to treat the cold, cough, and fever in clinical management protocol for seasonal influenza. These tablets comprise three active ingredients namely, paracetamol (PAR), pseudoephedrine sulphate (PSE), and loratadine (LOR) in a challengeable ratio (100:24:1), respectively. In order to analyze their pharmaceutical formulation with minor component, this study proposes a brand-new, potent, white synergistic spectrophotometric technique. In-silico synergistic strategy (ISS) is applied by means of three innovative methods i.e. extended absorbance difference (EAD) at 300.0 nm and 306.0 nm for PAR and absorbance resolution (AR) for LOR at 232.6 nm and 262.6 nm combined with spectrum subtraction (SS) for PSE. While leveling synergistic strategy (LSS) is accomplished via cumulative response method (CR) for LOR and PAR at 248.0 nm using one regression equation. A commendable correlation was revealed in the concentration ranges (1.5-17.0 μg/mL), (4.0-40.0 μg/mL), (3.5-35.0 μg/mL) for PAR, PSE and LOR, correspondingly. The mixtures and dosage forms were successfully analyzed using these spectrophotometric techniques, and the purity of the extracted parent spectra of each drug was confirmed using a spectral similarity index to identify any erroneous components. The concepts of green analytical chemistry were applied to the proposed methods, and the proposed methods' eco-friendliness was confirmed by different greenness evaluation tools including Greenness Index with Spider Charts, Analytical greenness metric (AGREE) and Analytical Eco-Scale (AES). Additionally, the recently released White Analytical Chemistry (WAC) was wont to examine the whiteness properties.