Masoud Gazizadeh - Department of Biology, Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Tabriz, Tabriz, Iran.
Mohammad Amjadi - Department of Analytical Chemistry, Faculty of Chemistry, University of Tabriz, Tabriz, Iran
Gholamreza Dehghan - Department of Biology, Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Tabriz, Tabriz, Iran.

Glibenclamide or glyburide is related to sulfonylureas medications which is used as an antidiabetic drug, commonly for the treatment of type 2 diabetes. It was the most applied sulfonylurea in the United States, in 2003. Because of the increasing consumption of this drug, developing a rapid, simple and reliable analytical method for its quality control is of great importance. Herein, we present a novel method for glibenclamide determination which is based on its enhancing effect on the fluorescence emission of CdTe quantum dots (QDs) modified by mercaptopropionic acid. After optimization of effective factors such as pH, buffer, contact time and concentration of CdTe QDs, a linear relationship was obtained between the emission intensity of QDs and glibenclamide concentration in the range of 0.1–70 nmol L-1, with a detection limit of 0.03 nmol L-1 and relative standard deviations lower than 2.8%. The developed method was successfully applied to the determination of glibenclamide in pharmaceutical formulations, and human urine samples obtaining acceptable results which were validated by spike technique.

Glibenclamide, CdTe quantum dots, fluorescence enhancing, pharmaceutical formulations