Detection of Ultratrace Chloramphenicol Residues in Milk and Chicken Muscle Samples Using a Chemiluminescent ELISA

A competitive indirect chemiluminescent enzyme-linked immunoassay (CL-ELISA) for chloramphenicol (CAP) residues in milk and chicken muscle has been developed. Due to the unique characteristic of the polyclonal antibody, special reaction system and modified extract method, then after optimization (concentration of Tween-20, concentration of PB and pH, incubation time, and temperature), the method gave a detection limit of 0.92 ng/L and a detection range of 3.16–3035 ng/L, with the IC50 of 17.29 ng/L in optimum condition and real sample matrix. When CAP was spiked in milk and chicken muscle at levels of 5–100 ng/L, recoveries ranged from 104.9%–114.8% and 101.0%–118.8%, with coefficients of variation of 3.0%–14.6% and 9.5%–14.4%, respectively. In an actual chicken muscle residue study, although the extract of samples diluted 10-fold, or even 100-fold, which represents extremely lower concentration of CAP, the results obtained by CL-ELISA correlated well with those obtained by gas chromatography with microcell electron capture detector. The developed method is therefore suitable for screening of ultratrace CAP residues in milk and chicken muscle samples.