Electrochemical determination of antihypertensive drugs by employing costless and portable unmodified screen-printed electrodes

Hypertension increases the risk of heart disease and stroke, is commonly known as a silent killer disease and considered as one of the key risk factor for premature death and disability over the world. Herein, we report for the first time a sensitive, costless and reproducible voltammetric method for individual determination of five antihypertensive drugs namely, propranolol (PRO), timolol (TIM), amlodipine (AML), amiloride (AMI) and triamterene (TRI) using differential pulse voltammetry at bare/unmodified screen-printed carbon electrodes (SPEs) in presence of sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS). Each drug exhibits an electrochemical signal in aqueous media which is significantly enhanced in presence of optimized concentration of SDS due to accumulation of the protonated drug molecules and electrostatically interaction with negatively charged micellar structures. As a result, the spherical micellar orientation of SDS onto the graphitic surface of SPEs offered the analytically sensitive determination of the target drugs over a wide linear concentration range with nano-molar detection limits possible negating the need for any complicated surface modifications. Finally, the proposed voltammetric method was successfully utilized in the individual determination of the target antihypertensive drugs in pharmaceutical formulations and human urine samples.