Simultaneous determination of ampicillin sodium and sulbactam sodium in binary mixtures and commercial dosage forms using chemometrics-assisted spectrophotometric techniques

Abstract

The binary mixture of ampicillin sodium and sulbactam sodium is officially analyzed by HPLC but can not be simultaneously determined by the normal spectrophotometric techniques since their absorption spectra have a strong degree of overlapping. The current study developed chemometrics-assisted techniques for the simultaneous determination of the two drugs without performing any chemical separation process. Derivative spectrophotometry, derivative ratio spectrophotometry, classical least square (CLS) technique and principal component regression (PCR) technique were tried for the same purpose. Derivative spectrophotometric technique was not successful as the overlapping absorption spectra of the two drugs could not be resolved from each other using this technique. Derivative ratio technique showed a better result as it separated the two drugs to a better extent. The CLS and PCR methods were found to be capable of separating and hence determining the two drugs simultaneously. The recovery results obtained using all the techniques that could resolve spectra of the two drugs were acceptable and very close to the result obtained by the official method. Thus, the techniques can be equivalently used for the simultaneous determination of the studied drugs.