Development and Evaluation of Chemometric Models for the Estimation of Sumatriptan in the Presence of Naproxen and a Degradation Product Using UV Spectrophotometry.

Background: Chemometrics is a discipline that allows the spectral resolution of drugs in a pharmaceutical formulation along with degradation product and it is an alternative to chromatographic methods.

Objective: Sumatriptan (SUM) is co-formulated with naproxen (NAP) and used in acute migraine attacks. SUM, which has physiological importance, has not been subjected to any stability-indicating chemometric approaches yet, so there is a need for an accurate and safe method for the assay of the cited drug in its preparations. The greenness and blueness assessment was applied using different ecological metrics, including the Green Analytical Procedure Index (GAPI), Analytical Greenness Metric (AGREE), Analytical Eco-Scale (AES) and new "blueness" evaluation using the Blue Applicability Grade Index (BAGI) tool.

Methods: SUM was determined in pharmaceutical formulation along with NAP and in presence of alkali-induced degradation product with simple and cost-effective multivariate approaches using spectrophotometric data. Three chemometric approaches were applied for the stability-indicating determination of SUM in the presence of NAP. Classical least-squares (CLS), partial least-squares regression (PLS), and principal components regression (PCR)-three multivariate calibration numerical models that were applied to the UV spectra of the mixtures-were used to achieve the best resolution.

Results: Sumatriptan was analyzed with mean accuracies for PLS (100.29% ± 1.318) and for PCR (100.60% ± 1.564). The presented methods were compared and validated for their quantitative analyses. Moreover, statistical comparison between the results obtained by the proposed models and the official methods showed no significant differences.

Conclusion: The proposed multivariate calibrations were accurate and specific for quantitative analysis of the studied component. PLS is the best method that has the capacity for qualitative analysis of SUM and it is suitable for routine analysis and stability studies of SUM in QC laboratories. Various ecological assessment metrics confirmed the long-standing eco-friendliness of the suggested models.

Highlights: Severally overlapped mixtures of SUM along with co-formulated drug NAP and an alkali-induced degradation product were analyzed by three chemometric approaches. The analytical performance of PLS and PCR was compared and validated in terms of root-mean-square error of calibration (RMSEC), SE of prediction, and recoveries. PLS gave the highest predicted concentrations with the lowest RMSEC and root-mean-square error of prediction. The standard addition was applied for accuracy assessment and the results were compared to those of official methods. Proposed models determined SUM in synthetic mixtures and pharmaceutical formulation in QC laboratories and stability studies. Ecological evaluation tools for measuring the environmental friendliness of chemicals were utilized for the first time in the analysis of SUM.