Determination of chemical elements in synthetic drugs by the Neutron Activation Analysis method

The objective of this study was to determine by the method of Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) chemical elements present in two coded drugs of D and R, widely used by the population. Drug D is used as an analgesic and works to relieve pain and fever and R is used to lower cholesterol and triglyceride levels. For analysis, the two drugs were ground to powder and aliquots of each sample were weighed and irradiated with the synthetic element patterns in the nuclear reactor IEA R1 under thermal neutron flux for 16 h. After adequate decay times, the gamma activities of the samples and standards were measured using a hyper pure germanium detector connected to a digital spectrum analyzer. In drugs D and R the elements Br, Co, Cr, Cs, Fe, K, Na, Sb, Sc and Zn were determined, and in drug R, besides these elements, the AC was determined. To evaluate the analytical quality of the results, the INCT MPH 2 certified reference material (Mixed Polish Herbs) was analyzed and the results obtained indicated a good reproducibility and agreement with the certificate values. The study demonstrated the feasibility of applying the NAA method to evaluate the elements present in synthetic drugs. In addition, the results obtained by the detection and quantification limits indicated a high sensitivity of the method for analysis