Simultaneous determination of naproxen, salicylic acid and acetylsalicylic acid by spectrofluorimetry using partial least-squares (PLS) multivariate calibration.

Determination of naproxen, salicylic acid and acetylsalicylic acid has been carried out in mixtures of up to three components by recording emission fluorescence spectra between 300 and 520 nm with an excitation wavelength of 290 nm. The excitation-emission spectra of these compounds are strongly overlapped, which does not permit their direct determination without previous separation by conventional methodologies. Here, a method is proposed for the determination of these chemicals by the use of a full-spectrum multivariate calibration method, partial least-squares (PLS). The experimental calibration matrix was designed with 18 samples. The concentrations were varied between 0.1 and 1.0 mug ml(-1) for naproxen, 0.5 and 5.0 mug ml(-1) for salicylic acid and from 2.0 to 12.0 mug ml(-1) for acetylsalicylic acid. The cross-validation method was used to select the number of factors. To check the accuracy of the proposed method, the optimized model, obtained using PLS-1, was applied to the determination of these compounds in pharmaceuticals and human serum samples previously spiked with different amounts of each chemical.