Amplified anodic electrogenerated chemiluminescence of tris(2,2′-bipyridyl)ruthenium(II) for ultrasensitive detection of bambuterol: Application to content uniformity testing

Asthma is one of the most common chronic diseases among children and has affected about 300 million individuals worldwide according to the report of the world health organization. Herein, we present the first electrochemiluminescence (ECL) report for the determination of an important antiasthmatic drug (Bambuterol). It was found that bambuterol can act as an efficient coreactant for Ru(bpy)₃²⁺ ECL via oxidation-reduction pathway. The electrogenerated reducing species from bambuterol and Ru(bpy)₃²⁺ could react together at the surface of gold electrode to generate an intense ECL signal. Based on this new finding, the first ECL study was proposed and optimized for the rapid, highly sensitive, and selective screening of bambuterol in its pure form with a wide linearity of 10.0 nM - 2.0 μM and an ultra-low detection limit of 1.48 nM. The developed system was applied for assaying bambuterol in pharmaceutical preparations. Furthermore, the developed system was also utilized to determine the content uniformity of bambuterol in low dose tablets.