Liquid Chromatographic Determination of Fluorescent Derivatives of Six Sulfonamides in Bovine Serum and Milk

Abstract

Abstract A rapid and sensitive liquid chromatographic (LC) method with fluorometric detection was developed to detect sulfadiazine, sulfathiazole, sulfamethazine, sulfamonomethoxine, sulfamethoxazole, and sulfadimethoxine residues in bovine serum and milk. p-Aminobenzoic acid (PABA) was added as an internal standard. The sulfonamides were extracted from samples and derivatized with fluorescamine, and 50 μL was injected into a NovaPak C18 LC column and eluted with acetonitrile– 10 mM potassium phosphate (30 + 70, v/v). The sulfonamides were detected fluorometrically (excitation, 390 nm; emission, 475 nm), and their retention times ranged from 6.2 to 16.5 min without interference from coextractives. The detection limit for standard sulfonamide solution was 0.1 ng/mL; the calibration curves were linear between 1 and 100 ng/mL in the presence of PABA as internal standard. Recovery rates of sulfonamides from spiked samples (1 and 10 ppb) were 95.4–107.2 and 81.4–89.6% for serum and 80.7–91.1 and 62.6–84.1% for milk, respectively.