Determination of sulfonamides in animal tissues by modified QuEChERS and liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry

Abstract

In this study, the salting-out solvent extraction and dispersive solid-phase extraction (dSPE) clean-up steps in QuEChERS (quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged, and safe) method were optimized to reduce matrix effect and efficiently extract target sulfonamides from a variety of edible animal tissues. The extracted sulfonamides were then analyzed using liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). Good extraction recoveries (74.0−100.3% in five different sources of animal tissues; n=3) with acceptable matrix effect (<10%, except for liver samples) were obtained using the proposed method. For the first time, a commercial ND-lipids cartridge was used to remove hydrophobic matrix components from fat-rich animal tissues in the clean-up step of QuEChERS. In addition, good linearity (0.125−12.5ngg−1) was observed using matrix-matched calibration (in beef). Limits of detection (LODs) were estimated at 0.01−0.03ngg−1 in beef, pork, and chicken samples. For beef tripe and pig liver samples, the LODs were in the range of 0.02−0.04ngg−1. Good intra-day/inter-day precision (1.0–10.5%/0.4–8.0%) and accuracy (95.2–107.2%/97.8–102.1%) were also achieved using the modified QuEChERS for sample pretreatment. The applicability of the modified QuEChERS-LC-MS/MS method was demonstrated by determining the occurrence of target sulfonamides in various edible animal tissues for potential food safety analysis.