Determination of ambroxol hydrochloride, guaifenesin, and theophylline in ternary mixtures and in the presence of excipients in different pharmaceutical dosage forms.

Determination of ternary mixtures of ambroxol hydrochloride, guaifenesin, and theophylline with minimum sample pretreatment and without analyte separation has been successfully achieved by using chemometric and RP-HPLC methods. The developed chemometric models are partial least squares (PLS) and genetic algorithm coupled with PLS. Data of the analyses were obtained from UV-Vis spectra of the studied drugs in different concentration ranges. These models have been successfully updated to be applied for determination of the proposed drugs in Farcosolvin syrup and in the presence of a syrup excipient (methyl paraben). In the developed RP-HPLC method, chromatographic runs were performed on an RP-C18 analytical column with the isocratic mobile phase 0.05 M phosphate buffer-methanol-acetonitrile-triethylamine (63.5 + 27.5 + 9 + 0.25, v/v/v/v, pH 5.5 adjusted with orthophosphoric acid) at a flow rate of 1.2 mL/min. The analytes were detected and quantified at 220 nm. The method was optimized in order to obtain good resolution between the studied components and to prevent interference from methyl paraben. Method validation was performed with respect to International Conference on Harmonization guidelines and the validation acceptance criteria were met in all cases. The proposed methods can be considered acceptable for QC of the studied drugs in pharmaceutical capsules and syrup. The results obtained by the suggested chemometric methods for determination of the studied mixture in different pharmaceutical preparations were statistically compared to those obtained by applying the developed RP-HPLC method, and no significant difference was found.