Modeling of second-order spectrophotometric data generated by a pH-gradient flow injection technique for the determination of doxorubicin in human plasma

Abstract

In this paper, the development of a pH-gradient flow-injection method with diode-array spectrophotometric detection combined with extended multivariate curve resolution–alternating least-squares (MCR–ALS) to quantitate doxorubicin in the presence of rifampicin in plasma samples is presented. Quantitation of doxorubicin was based on acid–base and spectral differences between its species and those for the interference. Overlapped profiles among the analyte and the interference were mathematically solved by data modeling with the well-known extended MCR–ALS algorithm. The method, which involves a simple sample pretreatment consisting in the addition of trichloroacetic acid followed by centrifugation, was applied to resolve validation mixtures composed of human plasma spiked with doxorubicin. Acceptable analytical figures of merit were obtained, i.e. recoveries from 96 to 107%, coefficients of variation between 0.2% and 7.8%, and limits of detection and quantification of 0.77 and 2.32 μg L− 1, respectively.