A Cost-Effective and Sensitive Method for the Determination of Lincomycin in Foods of Animal Origin Using High-Performance Liquid Chromatography

Abstract

Background: Lincomycin (LIN) is extensively used for treating diseases in livestock and promoting growth in food animal farming, and it is frequently found in both the environment and in food products. Currently, most of the methods for detecting lincomycin either lack sensitivity and precision or require the use of costly equipment such as mass spectrometers. Result: In this study, we developed a reliable high-performance liquid chromatography-ultraviolet detection (HPLC-UVD) method and used it to detect LIN residue in 11 types of matrices (pig liver and muscle; chicken kidney and liver; cow fat, liver and milk; goat muscle, liver and milk; and eggs) for the first time. The tissue homogenates and liquid samples were extracted via liquid–liquid extraction, and subsequently purified and enriched via sorbent and solid phase extraction (SPE). After nitrogen drying, the products were derivatized with p-toluene sulfonyl isocyanic acid (PTSI) (100 µL) for 30 min at room temperature. Finally, the derivatized products were analyzed by HPLC at 227 nm. Under the optimized conditions, the method displayed impressive performance and demonstrated its reliability and practicability, with a limit of detection (LOD) and quantification (LOQ) of LIN in each matrix of 25–40 μg/kg and 40–60 μg/kg, respectively. The recovery ranged from 71.11% to 98.30%. Conclusions: The results showed that this method had great selectivity, high sensitivity, satisfactory recovery and cost-effectiveness—fulfilling the criteria in drug residue and actual detection requirements—and proved to have broad applicability in the field of detecting LIN in animal-derived foods.