Determination of acetylsalicylic acid and its major metabolites in bovine urine using ultra performance liquid chromatography

• A fast method for acetylsalicylic acid and its three metabolites is reported.
• Ultraperformance LC with photometric and fluorometric detectors is used.
• Fluorometric detection allows better detection limits and selectivity levels.
• The separation of the four analytes is achieved in less than 2 min.
• The method has been satisfactorily applied to the analysis of bovine urine samples.

A new method based on ultra high performance liquid chromatography (UPLC) with photometric and fluorometric detection for the determination of acetylsalicylic acid and its main metabolites, namely gentisic, salicylic and salicyluric acids, in bovine urine samples is reported. Photometric detection was used for acetylsalicylic acid determination, whereas the native fluorescence of the metabolites was monitored using fluorometric detection. The separation was performed under isocratic conditions, using acetonitrile–phosphate solution (3.5 mM, pH 3.5) (26:74, v/v) as the mobile phase. The retention times of the four compounds were lower than 2 min, which are shorter than those achieved using conventional HPLC. Under the optimum separation conditions, the dynamic ranges and detection limits (ng mL−1) were: 0.2–2500, 0.09 for gentisic acid; 0.2–2500, 0.08 for salicylic acid and 2.5–15,000, 1.1 for salicyluric acid, using fluorescence detection, and 10–25,000, 2.2 for acetylsalicylic acid, using UV detection. Intra-day and inter-day precision data were assessed at two levels of concentration of each analyte using both detection systems. The selectivity of the method was checked by assaying different drugs of veterinary use showing that most of them did not interfere with the determination of the analytes. The method has been applied to the analysis of bovine urine samples, which only required a simple clean up step of the samples prior to injection in the UPLC system. A recovery study was performed, which provided values in the range of 80–100%. This fact proves the practical usefulness of this method as an ultrafast analytical tool for the therapeutic control of acetylsalicylic acid administration in bovine animals intended for food production.