Simultaneous Determination of Paracetamol and Tramadol in Pharmaceutical Tablets by Derivative UV-Vis Absorption Spectrophotometry

Abstract

A comparative study of the use of first derivative zero order crossing spectra for the resolution of Paracetamol and Tramadol hydrochloride in mixtures has been achieved showing the success of the first derivative method in resolving and quantifying both compounds. Using the first derivative, rather than the second derivative, results in improved signal to noise ratio. The absorption spectra of prepared mixtures were scanned in the range of 200-500 nm. The linear concentration ranges were 25-112 and 6-48 µg mL-1 for paracetamol and Tramadol hydrochloride, respectively. The method has been successfully used for prediction of concentrations of both compounds in mixtures with good selectivity, high sensitivity and extremely low relative error. Statistical comparison was performed using t-test at 95% confidence level. There was no significant statistical difference between the results obtained by the first derivative method and the accepted values for both compounds. Also, the percentage errors were very low which adds to the merits of our work in terms of both sensitivity and accuracy.