Chemical analysis applied to the radiation sterilization of solid ketoprofen

The aim of this work is to investigate the feasibility of radiation sterilization of ketoprofen from a chemical point of view. Although irradiated ketoprofen has already been studied in the literature [Katusin-Razem et al., Radiat. Phys. Chem. 73 111-116 (2005)], new results, on the basis of electron spin resonance (ESR) measurements and the use of hyphenated techniques (GC-MS and LC-MS), are obtained. The ESR spectra of irradiated ketoprofen consists of four unresolved resonance peaks and the mean G-value of ketoprofen is found to be 4 +/- 0.9 nmoles/J, which is very small. HPLC-UV analyses indicate that no significant loss of ketoprofen is detected after irradiation. LC-MS-MS analyses show that the structures of the non-volatile final products are similar to ketoprofen. Benzaldehyde is detected in the irradiated samples after dynamic-extraction GC-MS. The analyses show that ketoprofen is radioresistant and therefore might be radiosterilized.