Electromembrane extraction of pharmaceutical analytes: Systematic review and meta-analysis

Electromembrane extraction (EME) has attracted much attention in sample pre-treatment and many systematic reviews have been published in this field. Generally, all previous reviews in EMEs typically collect and synthesize evidence in a very transparent and systematic way to answer specific questions. However, we always found that some research conclusions were inconsonant in different studies. To compare any inconsistencies in data (taking EME of drugs as an example), differences on EME extraction efficiency under various experimental parameters were comprehensively reviewed using Dunn's All-Pairs Rank Comparison Test and meta-analysis. Our results modified the conventional understandings in EME, indicating that 1) some EME set-ups showed disadvantages when considering target recoveries; 2) the extraction time and stirring rate were recommended to be 20-25 min and 1000-1200 rpm, respectively; 3) adding carriers to traditional supported liquid membranes for non-polar analytes could improve the extraction of polar analytes to a certain degree; 4) enrichment factor is a more rational evaluation criterion rather than recovery during the processing optimizations. We believe this study has addressed some of the challenges remained in EME today.