Real-Time Analyzers, Inc., Middletown, CT 06457, USA.
Pharmaceutics. 2014 Dec 22;6(4):651-62. doi: 10.3390/pharmaceutics6040651.
Pharmaceutical drugs are available to astronauts to help them overcome the deleterious effects of weightlessness, sickness and injuries. Unfortunately, recent studies have shown that some of the drugs currently used may degrade more rapidly in space, losing their potency before their expiration dates. To complicate matters, the degradation products of some drugs can be toxic. Here, we present a preliminary investigation of the ability of Raman spectroscopy to quantify mixtures of four drugs; acetaminophen, azithromycin, epinephrine, and lidocaine, with their primary degradation products. The Raman spectra for the mixtures were replicated by adding the pure spectra of the drug and its degradant to determine the relative percent contributions using classical least squares. This multivariate approach allowed determining concentrations in ~10 min with a limit of detection of ~4% of the degradant. These results suggest that a Raman analyzer could be used to assess drug potency, nondestructively, at the time of use to ensure crewmember safety.
药物可被用于帮助宇航员克服失重、疾病和受伤带来的有害影响。不幸的是，最近的研究表明，目前使用的一些药物可能在太空中更快地降解，在过期之前失去效力。更复杂的是，一些药物的降解产物可能具有毒性。在这里，我们初步研究了拉曼光谱定量分析四种药物（对乙酰氨基酚、阿奇霉素、肾上腺素和利多卡因）及其主要降解产物混合物的能力。通过添加药物和其降解产物的纯光谱来复制混合物的拉曼光谱，使用经典最小二乘法确定相对百分贡献。这种多元方法允许在大约 10 分钟内确定浓度，检测限约为降解产物的 4%。这些结果表明，拉曼分析仪可以在使用时非破坏性地评估药物效力，以确保机组人员的安全。
