Determination of Antibiotics Residues in Milk Using a QuEChERS Method Using Full Factorial Design and Liquid Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometry

This study evaluated different methods of extraction based on quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged and safe (QuEChERS) method for analysis of the antibiotics ceftiofur, cloxacillin and enrofloxacin in milk using ultra-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. The QuEChERS acetate method has been shown to be inefficient for extracting such antibiotics. The optimized QuEChERS method presented excellent recoveries, from 95 to 99%. A complete factorial design was used to evaluate the effects of variables of the clean-up step: anhydrous octadecylsilane (C18), primary secondary amine (PSA) and sodium acetate (NaAc). Linearity (R2) above 0.96 was achieved for all compounds. Accuracy and precision were assessed by recovery. Accuracy was 91-99%. Intraday precision with relative standard deviations (RSD) lower than 12.3% and interday precision lower than 12.4% were obtained. Limits of detection (LOD) and quantification (LOQ) were obtained between 1.4-6.8 and 1.5-8.7 µg L-1, respectively. The applicability was evaluated using 91 real milk samples.