Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: The dietary supplement market is one of the fastest-growing sectors of the food industry. However, regulatory challenges and discrepancies between declared and actual composition raise concerns regarding product authenticity and consumer safety. Consequently, there is a growing need for rapid, reliable, and cost-effective methods for dietary supplement quality control. This study aimed to develop a novel electrochemical profiling method for dietary supplements containing B-group vitamins. To establish an effective fingerprinting strategy, cyclic voltammetry (CV) and differential pulse voltammetry (DPV) were performed using glassy carbon (GC) and boron-doped diamond (BDD) working electrodes. The resulting electrochemical responses were compared to assess the complementarity of the information provided by the different electrode materials and voltammetric techniques. The recorded data were analyzed using principal component analysis (PCA) to investigate the differentiation of dietary supplements based on formulation, revealing clear clustering of the investigated samples. Subsequently, two partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) models were developed for sample classification by product type and the presence of manufacturer-declared active ingredients, achieving classification accuracies of up to 100%. The proposed approach demonstrates the potential of electrochemical profiling as a rapid and cost-effective screening tool for dietary supplement quality control, supporting the assessment of sample consistency with manufacturer-declared composition and flagging samples that warrant further confirmatory analysis.
Source: ChemRxiv
Institution: Warsaw University of Technology
Language: English
Subfield: Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7211917271