The Analgesic Metamizole (Dipyrone) and Its Related Products Antipyrine, 4-Aminoantipyrine and 4-Methylaminoantipyrine. Part 1: Mass Spectrometric and Electrochemical Detection

Achim Habekost

doi:10.12691/wjce-6-3-6

Abstract

A drastic increase in the consumption of pharmaceuticals has resulted in a high load of pharmaceuticals in wastewater. Many pharmaceuticals are non-biodegradable and are resistant to conventional wastewater treatments. For this reason there is an obvious need to first detect these substances and, second, to detoxify them. Metamizole is a typical representative of an analgesic non-steroidal. In this first part, a rapid, sensitive, and inexpensive detection method with different commercial screen-printed electrodes (SPEs) were used to quantitatively detect metamizole. (Spectro-)Electrochemical methods such as cyclic voltammetry (CV), electrogenerated chemiluminescence (ECL), and amperometry (AM) are discussed in detail and the sensitivities of the electrochemical methods are compared to the sensitivity of conventional gas chromatography-mass spectrometry detection (GC-MSD). The limit of detection (LOD) is 1 mol/L for GCMS and 5 to 50 mol/L for electrochemical detection depending on the method used.

Highlights

Pharmaceuticals, personal care products and endocrine active substances have been recognised as being important topics in environmental chemistry [1]
- to demonstrate that electrogenerated chemiluminescence (ECL) correlates to cyclic voltammetry (CV) predictions, - to investigate electrochemical instruments, and - to use ECL in analytical techniques—in particular, to investigate pharmaceutical substances such as metamizole
This paper has described mass spectrometry and threeelectrochemical methods for identifying metamizole: CV, ECL and AM

Summary

Introduction

Pharmaceuticals, personal care products and endocrine active substances have been recognised as being important topics in environmental chemistry [1]. Feldmann et al [2] detected a considerable amount of pharmaceutical residues in the aquatic environment These authors distinguish between two sources of discharge: (1) wastewater from private households and (2) medical facility effluents, e.g., from hospitals. Some topics handle complex apparatus, such as mass spectrometers and NMR spectrometers, AAS, HPLC, potentiostats, etc This is done by solving chemical problems, e.g., determining the LOD of the different analytical methods. - to demonstrate that ECL correlates to CV predictions, - to investigate electrochemical instruments (potentiostat, light detection), and - to use ECL in analytical techniques—in particular, to investigate pharmaceutical substances such as metamizole. Some of the principles of green chemistry, i.e. safety and quality control and the reduction of the

Experimental

Results

Electrochemical Characterisation via Cyclic Voltammetry

Amperometric Detection

Discussion

Method mass spectrometry