What is it about?
It is about electrochemical sensors as a versatile tool for the detection of low level hazardous pharmaceuticals and their metabolites. It explores advances in nanomaterial-based electrochemical sensors for detecting health hazardous pharmaceutical contaminants and provides valuable insights into their mechanistic details. A list of highly hazardous anticancer and antibiotics has been published by the Environmental Quality Standards Directive, European Union and the WHO. A variety of standard analytical methods for detecting contaminants in environmental samples are available, however most of them are expensive, require bulky instrumentation, more time and expert manpower. To address these shortcomings, electrochemical sensors are developed for on-site detection pharmaceutical residues. The World Health Organization has formalized the ASSURED criteria as a bench mark for sensing analytics to produce robust sensing platform for real time monitoring. In this review the recent trends in detecting various pharmaceutical residues for on-site detection are evoked by applying nanomaterials based electrochemical sensing platforms.
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Why is it important?
It highlights voltammetry as a highly efficient tool for examining the redox characteristics of drugs and their low-level detection. This review presents the redox mechanisms of anticancer and antibiotics based on results obtained from electroanalytical techniques that give awareness about the metabolic fate of these drugs. Nanomaterials based electrochemical sensors play a fundamental role in revealing the existence of pharmaceutical residues that pose a risk to ecosystem while the difficulties being encountered in the use and selection of electrode modifiers for enhancing sensing events suggest this field as a hot area of future research. This document presents the versatility of the electrochemical techniques for drug detection and analysis and encourages further research and innovation in environmental and health sectors. It supports decision-making by reducing the impact of hazardous residues on human health and water dwelling organisms by giving precise and timely data on pharmaceutical effluents.
Perspectives
By utilizing nanomaterial-modified electrochemical sensors, the sensitivity and selectivity of detection methods can be significantly improved. The small size and customizable properties of nanomaterials enable these sensors to identify trace amounts of drugs in diverse samples. However, challenges persist in achieving reliable and accurate electrochemical monitoring of drugs in water and biological samples. Biofluids such as saliva, urine, and blood/serum, along with environmental samples from lakes and rivers, often contain numerous interfering substances that can diminish analyte signals. This review examines electrochemical methods and their potential applications for detecting pharmaceuticals and their metabolites, while also addressing the mechanisms of action and harmful effects of these drugs on both ecosystems and human health. Recent developments in electrochemical sensors utilizing nanomaterials for the detection of health-threatening pharmaceutical contaminants are examined, providing important insights into their underlying mechanisms. The emphasis is placed on the detection of anticancer agents and antibiotics, which relies on the electrocatalytic properties of the sensor materials.
Dr Afzal Shah
Quaid-i-Azam University, Iislamabad
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Electrochemical analysis of anticancer and antibiotic drugs in water and biological specimens, RSC Advances, January 2024, Royal Society of Chemistry,
DOI: 10.1039/d4ra05685j.
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