Analyzing antibiotic residues in honey samples using liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry

ABSTRACT

This study aimed to present a sensitive, accurate, and precise analytical method for the determination of 32 antibiotics from 5 groups (sulfonamides, macrolides, aminoglycosides, tetracyclines, and quinolones) and some individual antibiotics (lincomycin, griseofulvin, and 5-hydroxy-flunixin) in 63 honey samples collected from Tehran market. In the presented method, the samples were hydrolyzed by 1% HFBA (hepta fluoro butyric acid) in water, purified on Strata XL polymeric reversed-phase cartridges, and finally analyzed by reversed-phase ion-pair liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry (RP-IP-LC-ESI-MS/MS). Good performance characteristics were gained for recovery, precision, range, and linearity, the limit of detections (LODs), and the limit of quantifications (LOQs). According to the presented results and considering the absence of permissible limits for antibiotics in honey, 74.6% of the tested samples had antibiotic residues more than the LOQ of the method. The results show that the validated method is suitable for simultaneously detecting antibiotic residues in honey.

KEYWORDS:

• Antibiotic
• honey
• LC-ESI⁺-MS/MS
• SPE
• HFBA

Acknowledgements

The authors greatly appreciate the Food and Drug Laboratory Control References Labs, Food and Drug Administration, MOH, Tehran, Iran, for supporting and providing laboratory facilities.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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The authors declare their Consent to Participate in this article.

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Authors contributions

Goudarzi Sh: Method validation, sample collection, and analysis. Eskandari S.: Software and writing. Daraei B.: Methodology, writing and editing Mousavi Khanghah A.: Review and editing. Amirahmadi M: Data curation, validation, supervision, review and editing.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported that there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.