Quantitative analysis of multi-class antibiotic residues in milk using LC/MS/MS

Introduction

Antimicrobial drugs are widely used for treatment and prevention of diseases in dairy cattle. Residues of these drugs may, therefore, be present in milk and can be a health hazard to consumers. They may cause allergic reactions in sensitive persons and can increase risk of developing antibiotic resistant pathogenic bacteria. Hence, monitoring of antimicrobial residues in commercial milk is essential for ensuring the safety and adequacy of food. Antibiotics belonging to different classes such as β-lactams, Sulfonamides, Macrolides etc. are generally administered to cattle to treat various bacterial infections. It is, therefore, desirable to develop a single analytical method for simultaneous determination of multi-class antibiotics. High specificity and sensitivity offered by LC/MS/MS technique makes it a preferred method of choice for multi-component analysis from complex matrices. Multi-class antibiotic analysis using LC/MS/MS requires a system capable of acquiring data in both positive and negative polarities simultaneously due to different ionization tendencies of analytes. Multiple antibiotics belonging to the same class may fragment to give same product ions during MRM analysis. Hence, it is essential to have minimum crosstalk. LCMS-8040 with ultrafast polarity switching (15 msec), UFsweeper^TM II technology (ensuring minimum cross talk), lowest dwell time and pause time (0.8 and 1 msec respectively) is, therefore, well suited for multi-class antibiotic analysis.

January 7, 2020 GMT