Sustainable chemometric analysis of tension headache drugs in the presence of nephrotoxic impurities

A three-drug combination of caffeine, aspirin and paracetamol is widely prescribed as a first-line treatment for tension headaches and migraine attacks. Being of easy access as an over-the-counter medication, renal papillary necrosis may be caused if large doses are taken chronically. Moreover, several toxic impurities such as p-aminophenol and p-hydroxy acetophenone may be formed during the synthesis or storage of paracetamol. These impurities are classified as nephrotoxic and teratogenic materials which obliges pharmaceutical companies to develop cost-effective methodologies for their detection along with paracetamol itself. During the current study, multivariate chemometric-assisted spectrophotometric models namely; Partial Least Squares, Genetic Algorithm-Partial Least Squares and Multivariate Curve Resolution-Alternating Least Squares were developed for assaying and resolving the complex spectral overlap of the ternary combination in the presence of the nephrotoxic impurities; p-aminophenol and p-hydroxy acetophenone. A comparison was held between the three models where the optimized Genetic Algorithm-Partial Least Squares and Multivariate Curve Resolution-Alternating Least Squares models reduced the root mean square by 18.1%, 21.7%, 20.0%, 43.9% and 11.5% and 31.5%, 32.6%, 39.3%, 54.6% and 37.9% for caffeine, aspirin, paracetamol, p-aminophenol and p-hydroxy acetophenone, respectively. Panadol® migraine tablets were successfully analyzed using the constructed models without interference from the excipients. A statistical comparative analysis and greenness evaluation were carried out using two assessment tools including the “Green Analytical Procedure Index” and the “Analytical Greenness metric”. Also, the “Whiteness Analytical Chemistry tool” using the RGB12 model and the Blueness Applicability Grade Index were applied. Greener quadrants and a high score of 0.74 for the greenness tools were achieved with accepted statistical parameters regarding t and f values. Also, the high scores of the Blueness Applicability Grade Index and RGB12 metrics of 90 and 98.3, respectively confirmed the method's wide practicality and utility. Although other chemometric methods were reported for assaying the ternary combination, our developed method was the only one that incorporated toxic impurities during the analysis along with implementing greenness, whiteness and blueness assessments to ensure the method's sustainability. [Display omitted] •Chemometric determination