Review—Nanostructured electrochemical sensors for determination of the first generation of the NNRTIs for HIV-1

Abstract

Since the 1980s, the HIV/AIDS pandemic has been a global concern and remains despite the tremendous efforts and successes in the development of antiviral drugs. The drug development and formulation process are not without challenges. However, the effective use of excipients can allow formulators to circumvent or at least minimize the impact of these challenges. Some of the challenges include ensuring a high quality of actives, free from impurities, and ensuring administration in appropriate quantities. Incorrect dosing can have a detrimental impact on the body. Evaluation of the quality and physiological function of these drugs in pharmaceutical and biological samples is vital. Considering this, we explore the potential application of electrochemical methods for the detection of these drugs. Electrochemical methods are versatile and enable faster and cheaper detection in comparison to conventional techniques. This review paper provides an outline of the latest developments and new trends in electroanalysis of the first generation of nonnucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors class of drugs. Furthermore, we highlight several phenomena occurring on bare solid electrodes and modified electrodes, including underlying mechanisms. In addition, we investigate the physical and electrochemical properties together with their figures of merits. The review covers only the reactions occurring at the surface of bare and modified electrodes and the reader is referred to the cited literature for the corresponding voltammograms of these studies. Recent data shows that modified electrodes based on nanoparticles present substantial advantages over their nonmodified counterparts enabling portability, higher selectivity, and multiple detection capabilities. These characteristics make nanoparticles promising candidates for the design of sensors.