Multivariate versus classical univariate calibration methods for spectrofluorimetric data: application to simultaneous determination of olmesartan medoxamil and amlodipine besylate in their combined dosage form.

Olmesartan medoxamil (OLM, an angiotensin II receptor blocker) and amlodipine besylate (AML, a dihydropyridine calcium channel blocker), are co-formulated in a single-dose combination for the treatment of hypertensive patients whose blood pressure is not adequately controlled on either component monotherapy. In this work, four multivariate and two univariate calibration methods were applied for simultaneous spectrofluorimetric determination of OLM and AML in their combined pharmaceutical tablets in all ratios approved by FDA. The four multivariate methods are partial least squares (PLS), genetic algorithm PLS (GA-PLS), principal component ANN (PC-ANN) and GA-ANN. The two proposed univariate calibration methods are, direct spectrofluorimetric method for OLM and isoabsorpitive method for determination of total concentration of OLM and AML and hence AML by subtraction. The results showed the superiority of multivariate calibration methods over univariate ones for the analysis of the binary mixture. The optimum assay conditions were established and the proposed multivariate calibration methods were successfully applied for the assay of the two drugs in validation set and combined pharmaceutical tablets with excellent recoveries. No interference was observed from common pharmaceutical additives. The results were favorably compared with those obtained by a reference spectrophotometric method.