Brooks AA, Antai SP and Ebong P
Keywords: Penicillium expansum, paracetamol syrup, HPLC assay. INTRODUCTION Paracetamol syrup is one the best selling analgesic and anti-pyretic drugs in Nigeria and the world over. It is usually given to infants as first line therapy for feverish conditions. Paracetamol syrup contains acetaminophen or 4-acetylaminophenol as the major active ingredient, and like many other pharmaceutical preparations, it also contains a variety of other excipients in a complex pharmaceutical state which help to m
Abstract: In this study, a high performance liquid chromatographic assay was carried out at room temperature to determine the concentration of active ingredient in paracetamol syrup contaminated by Penicillium expansum. The drug samples were extracted in methanol while the mobile phase was methanol: water (20:80 v/v) mixture. A volume of 20ul of various concentrations of reference standard (4-aminophenol), contaminated and non-contaminated paracetamol syrups were injected separately in triplicate into a C18 analytical column under reverse phase chromatographic conditions. The mean peak height, peak area and retention time for the contaminated sample were 3.47mUA, 23.58mUA2 and 3.51minutes, whereas the non contaminated sample had an average peak height of 368.53mUA, peak area of 2470.04mUA2 and retention time of 3.13 minutes. The standard curve generated from the data yielded perfect linearity with correlation coefficient, r=0.9990. The concentration of paracetamol in the contaminated sample was 0.36ug/ml while the control had 37.53ug/ml. The active component in the contaminated Paracetamol syrup was completely metabolized and transformed into a metabolite with an average peak area of 300.55mUA2, peak height of 20.05mUA and retention time of 3.15 minutes, by Penicillium expansum. These results confirm that Penicillium expansum can degrade some pharmaceutical drugs and transform them to unrelated forms.
[View Complete Article]