Abstract

Background: Atorvastatin calcium belongs to a group of drugs known as statins. It is commonly used to treat a heart disease, so it is used to lower or reduce the fats and bad cholesterol in blood. It has also been used to increase the good cholesterol in blood. Atorvastatin calcium content is commercially known as "Lipitor" tablet. It is available in local pharmacies at different concentrations; 10, 20 and 40mg. Atorvastatin calcium has been previously determined by several analytical techniques such as chromatographic methods, spectrophotometry and electrochemical methods.

Methods: Atorvastatin calcium drug was determined in pharmaceuticals using voltammetric techniques, HPLC and UV Vis onto surface of ultra-trace graphite (UT) working electrode. It was also analysed by voltammetric techniques in biological fluids such as plasma and urine.

Results: Some analytical parameters were evaluated such as buffer solutions, pH, accumulation time and potential, frequency, scan rate, amplitude voltage step and rate of stirring, using UT electrode vs. Ag/AgCl reference electrode and Pt auxiliary electrode. There are some parameters such as recovery, reproducibility, stability, calibration curve, detection limit, quantification limit and interference, which were also studied. Analytical applications for ATOR were carried out using pharmaceuticals that contained 10, 20 and 40 mg ATOR; and biological samples. Spectrophotometric and HPLC procedures were used for analytical applications to compare their results with anodic stripping voltammetry in terms of accuracy and precision.

Conclusion: The developed adsorptive anodic stripping voltammetric method was applied for the determination of ATOR using phosphate buffer at pH3 ATOR at phosphate buffer pH3, 30 s tacc, -0.6 V Eacc, 50 mV amplitude and 3000 rpm in its pharmaceuticals and biological samples. In this research, the determination of ATOR confirmed a high sensitivity of adsorptive anodic stripping voltammetry method comparing other electrochemical methods. The LOD and LOQ also confirmed the sensitivity of the adsorptive anodic stripping voltammetric method. HPLC and UV Vis spectrophotometric methods were used for the comparison of results with adsorptive anodic stripping voltammetry concerning analytical application of ATOR tablets. There are many published articles for the determination of ATOR, but they were lower than adsorptive anodic stripping voltammetry in terms of sensitivity and an ultra - trace graphite working electrode was used in this research as an additional advantage.

Keywords: Atorvastatin calcium, adsorptive anodic stripping voltammetry, graphite electrode, high sensitivity, pharmaceuticals, biological samples.

Graphical Abstract