Clinical Laboratory Innovations: Nanoscale Detection of Chloramphenicol Using Nanomaterial Biosensors

Chloramphenicol (CAP) is an important broad-spectrum antibiotic used to treat severe bacterial infections, but its clinical application is limited by serious toxic effects, including aplastic anaemia and bone marrow suppression. These care concerns underscore the need for fast, sensitive and reliable analytical methods for CAP detection in biological and food samples. In recent years, nanomaterial-based biosensors have emerged as encouraging tools for this purpose, offering enhanced sensitivity, selectivity and analytical performance. This review examines recent advances in nanoscale detection of CAP using nanomaterial biosensors, with specific emphasis on nanomaterial-based electrochemical platforms. The exceptional physicochemical properties of these materials, including enhanced electron transfer, large surface area, catalytic activity and signal amplification, have contributed to the development of highly effective sensing systems. These biosensors have shown strong potential for rapid analysis and trace detection in complex matrices. Moreover, several challenges remain before these platforms can be fully translated into routine clinical and regulatory use. Subjects such as matrix effects, reproducibility, stability and validation against reference methods require further attention. This review critically discusses current progress, highlights the limitations of existing approaches and outlines future directions for the development of practical laboratory-based biosensing approaches for CAP detection.