Methods of Thermal Analysis as Fast and Reliable Tools for Identification and Quantification of Active Ingredients in Commercially Available Drug Products

Background/Objectives: Drug products on the pharmaceutical market must meet a number of requirements that guarantee their quality, safety, and efficacy. Accordingly, periodic inspection of the content of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) in marketed drug products is carried out, confirming that they meet all quality and quantity requirements for a given drug formulation before the expiration date. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to evaluate the suitability of the most commonly used thermal analysis methods, differential thermal analysis (DTA), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), in the control of the composition of commercially available drug products. Results: Based on a review of the literature, it was shown that thermal methods can be useful in distinguishing drug products from different manufacturers, which guarantees their usefulness in quality control of finished drug products and detecting drug products from illegal manufacturers. They are also useful as tools for confirming the presence of APIs in dosage forms under investigation. The cited literature also indicates that DSC and TGA methods can be used in the quantification of APIs in marketed drug products and to detect non-compliant drug products. The use of chemometric techniques to interpret thermal data can eliminate the adverse effects of excipients on quantification results. Conclusions: Thermal methods are a good complement to chromatographic and spectroscopic methods, with the particular advantages of not needing any sample pretreatment, low sample weight, and short analysis time.