In this study, two chemometric techniques, partial least-square regression (PLSR) and artificial neural network (ANN) were developed and compared for the simultaneous assay of paracetamol (PCT) and caffeine (CAF) in pharmaceutical formulations by using spectrophotometric data. Six different concentrations of paracetamol and caffeine were considered to make mixture solutions of standard samples by using orthogonal experimental design (OED). UV spectra of these mixtures were recorded in the wavelength range of 205-300 nm versus a solvent blank and digitized absorbance was sampled at 1 nm intervals. Drug concentrations and instrumental spectra of 36 mixture solutions were used for model development and validation and finally 6 commercially available tablets were used to test the developed models. ANN shows better prediction efficiencies than that of PLSR with R2 value 99.28% for prediction and 99.13% for validation set. These two models were successfully applied to commercial pharmaceutical formulations, and it is found by ANN that the drugs contain 75 to 86% of paracetamol and 77 to 92% of caffeine of their label claim. Either of the proposed methods is simple and rapid and can be easily used in the quality assessment of drugs as an alternative analytical method. Bangladesh J. Sci. Ind. Res.54(3), 215-222, 2019

The combination of furosemide (furo) and spironolactone (spiro) is very effective in the treatment of heart failure. In that case, maintaining good quality of these drugs in commercial tablets is must. Therefore, a simple, economical, precise and accurate method, i.e; chemometric assisted UV spectroscopy, for simultaneous determination of furosemide and spironolactone in combined dosage form has been developed. In this study, principal component regression (PCR) has been reported for this purpose. A calibration set of 36 mixture solutions containing furosemide and spironolactone in methanol in the concentration range of 2.0-12.0 µg/ml and 5.0-30.0 µg/ml respectively has been prepared by means of an orthogonal experimental design. The absorbance data for the concentration set have been obtained by direct measurement in UV spectrophotometer at 101 wavelength points in the spectral region of 200-300 nm for the zero order spectra. The chemometric technique is also successfully applied to available pharmaceutical formulations, tablets, with no interference from excipients. The analytical performances of principal component regression are characterized by relative prediction errors and recoveries (%). The good recoveries obtained in this case proved that the proposed chemometric technique could be applied efficiently in the quality control of the studied drugs simultaneously in their mixture as well as in the commercial dosage form with satisfactory precision and accuracy as alternative analysis tools.

A 26 year old man with a painful left gluteal mass was found to have parachordoma. It had been noted 5 months prior to the time of the examination. Physical examination revealed diffuse swelling with elastic consistency and ill-defined margins. The tumor mass was measured as being 12 x 10 cm. An incisional biopsy was performed and diagnosed as parachordoma by histopathological examination.TAJ 2009; 22(1): 269-271

A simple and cost effective method has been developed for determination of adulteration in milk with urea and hydrogen peroxide by using chemometric modeling with Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopic data. Milk samples were purchased from a dairy farm (South Banasree, Dhaka, Bangladesh) and spiked at different concentrations of urea and hydrogen peroxide. Spectral data of all samples were collected using ATR-FTIR spectrophotometer. After acquisition of spectral data, they were preprocessed with transformation techniques such as multiplicative scatter correction (MSC) and savitzky-golay derivative. The predictive performance of principal component regression (PCR) and partial least-square regression (PLSR) methods were assessed by relative prediction errors and recoveries (%) were compared . PLSR shows better prediction efficiencies over PCR with R2 value 99% for urea and 95% for hydrogen peroxide.Six brands of commercial milk samples have been evaluated by this method and the samples contain 21.66-44.73 mg urea and 1.62-2.86 mg hydrogen peroxide in 100 ml milk. This method can be easily used in the quality assessment of milk. Bangladesh J. Sci. Ind. Res.56(1), 1-8, 2021

Capsule shell from animal source (bovine or porcine gelatin) is a problem for the follower of different religions and vegetarian. In that case, vegetable capsule shell could be a solution. In this research, we proposed a simple and cost-effective technique for detection of gelatin in vegetable capsule shell and for classification of capsule shell by source, based on Chemometric techniques with FTIR spectroscopic data. Partial Least-Square Regression (PLSR) models were developed and their efficiencies were assessed with spectroscopic data of range of 4000-700 cm-1. PLSR shows very good prediction efficiency (R2= 98%) for both vegetable capsule shell and gelatin. In addition, Soft Independent Modeling by Class Analogy (SIMCA) classification method were developed and assessed with spectral data of capsule shells from vegetable and animal sources. Results prove that FTIR spectroscopy in combination with chemometric method can be used for the classification of capsule shell by source and quantification of gelatin in vegetable capsule shell to ensure their authenticity. Bangladesh J. Sci. Ind. Res. 57(2), 91-98, 2022