Simultaneous spectrophotometric determination of drugs in pharmaceutical preparations using multiple linear regression and partial least-squares regression, calibration and prediction methods.

Two new methods for the simultaneous determination of acetylsalicylic acid, acetaminophen and caffeine based on total absorbance measurements and their processing by multiple linear regession and partial least-squares regression are proposed. The concentration ranges used to construct the calibration matrix were 4.0-12.0, 2.0-10.0 and 0.9-6.0 mug ml(-1) for acetylsalicylic acid, acetaminophen and caffeine respectively. The proposed methods were validated by using a set of synthetic sample mixtures and subsequently applied to the determination of the three active principles in three different pharmaceutical preparations.