Raman Spectroscopy: a Test Novel Technique for Quality Control In the Acetylsalicylic Acid

Raman spectroscopy (RS) is an inelastic scattering technique that is being recently applied in pharmaceutical applications. In this work this technique was applied to analyze the differences in concentrations of a commercial pharmaceutical form of an acetylsalicylic acid derivative present in tablets manufactured by five different laboratories (A, B, C, D and E). Meyer brand acetylsalicylic acid reagent was used to obtain spectral data as active principle. Five samples of different laboratories were also analyzed. We used a Raman microscopy device Horiba-JY HR800 with an excitation source of 830 nm and 17 mW. Raw data were analyzed by an arithmetic difference between the active substance from each different laboratory sample. Principal component analysis (PCA) was also applied to the spectral set to verify the differences in each pharmaceutical form of acetylsalicylic acid. We found a correlation of 0.7 between laboratory A and the active substance, and 0.98 between all spectra of the same laboratory A, we conclude that this drug was elaborated with better quality control. Results indicate that Raman spectroscopy can be applied in the pharmaceutical industry to determine adulteration or alteration in pharmaceutical formulations. We have demonstrate that RS together with PCA can be used as a fast and nondestructive method to determine the characteristics of the molecules present in commercially available drugs with very short acquisition times of few seconds.