Modified electrodes for electrochemical determination of metronidazole in drug formulations and biological samples: An overview

Metronidazole (MTZ) is an antibiotic drug derived from nitroimidazole, widely utilized for the treatment of various diseases caused by anaerobic bacteria and protozoa in human and domestic animal. However, this medicine is banned in several countries due to its high hazardous in nature, results in causing genotoxic, carcinogenic and mutagenic side effects. Several research groups are investigating its toxic adverse effect as well as removal from the environment sources. Thus, numerous analytical techniques have been reported for the detection of MTZ in various sources including drug formulations, environmental sources and biological samples. Herein, a comprehensive literature survey on electrochemical methods for the quantitative determination of MTZ and analogue drugs is shown. In this context, various kinds of chemically modified electrodes (CMEs) based sensors were developed instead of bare electrodes to overcome the obstacles like electrode fouling, less electrocatalytic activity, poor sensitivity and selectivity. Furthermore, CMEs have good anti-interference ability towards several MTZ co-existing substances. This overview presents the merits and demerits of various electrode materials used for the electrochemical detection of MTZ under various experimental conditions towards developing a new protocol or electrochemical strategy to improve the detection limit and standardising the experimental protocol. In addition, new challenges and opportunities of CMEs based electrochemical determination for the MTZ is also discussed.