Ceftazidime (CFZM) is a semisynthetic third generation cephalosporin antibiotic of high antibacterial activity, used for treating common bacterial infections. Due to insufficient oral bioavailability, CFZM is limited to parenteral administration. It is mainly eliminated from the consumers’ body through renal excretion (1, 2). For the first time, this article reports that CuO nanoparticles (CuO NPs) have intrinsic oxidase-like activity and are capable of catalyzing oxidation of luminol by dissolved oxygen (DO) to generate enhanced chemiluminescence (CL) emission. In addition, it was found that ceftazidime (CFZM) has the effective attenuating effect of CFZM on the CuO NPs-catalyzed luminol-O2 CL system in alkaline medium. Based on this finding a simple and sensitive CL method for the determination of CFZM was developed. The linear dynamic range of the method is 1 × 10-7- 4 × 10-6 mol L-1 with correlation coefficient of the calibration line being r2 = 0.9902. The limit of detection (LOD) was equal to 2.5 × 10-8 mol L-1 and relative standard deviation of the method with respect to 2.5 × 10-8 mol L-1 CFZM was equal to 4.5% (n = 4). The applicability of the method was demonstrated on pharmaceutical preparations, and tap and ground water. The CuO NPs were simply synthesized by quickprecipitation method and, then, were characterized by using X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) techniques. In addition, the possible mechanism for the CL reaction was discussed.
