Reduction of interferences in the analysis of Children's Dimetapp using ultraviolet spectroscopy data and target...

A calibration matrix has been developed and successfully applied to quantify actives in Children's Dimetapp®, a cough mixture whose active components suffer from heavy spectral interference. High-performance liquid chromatography/photodiode array instrument was used to identify the actives and any other UV-detectable excipients that might contribute to interferences. The instrument was also used to obtain reference data on the actives, instead of relying on the manufacturer's claims. Principal component analysis was used during the developmental stages of the calibration matrix to highlight any mismatch between the calibration and sample spectra, making certain that "apples" were not compared with "oranges". The prediction model was finally calculated using target factor analysis and partial least squares regression. In addition to the actives in Children's Dimetapp® (brompheniramine maleate, phenylephrine hydrogen chloride, and dextromethorphan hydrogen bromide), sodium benzoate was identified as the major and FD&C Blue #1, FD&C Red #40, and methyl anthranilate as minor spectral interferences. Model predictions were compared before and after the interferences were included into the calibration matrix. Before including interferences, the following results were obtained: brompheniramine maleate=481.3mgL^-1±134% RE; phenylephrine hydrogen chloride=1041mgL^-1±107% RE; dextromethorphan hydrogen bromide=1571mgL^-1±107% RE, where % RE=percent relative error based on the reference HPLC data. After including interferences, the results were as follows: brompheniramine maleate=196.3mgL^-1±4.4% RE; phenylephrine hydrogen chloride=501.3mgL^-1±0.10% RE; dextromethorphan hydrogen bromide=998.7mgL^-1±1.6% RE as detailed in Table 6.