Determination of oxytetracycline, tetracycline and chloramphenicol antibiotics in animal feeds using subcritical water extraction and high performance liquid chromatography

A rapid analytical method for the determination of oxytetracycline (OTC), tetracycline (TC) and chloramphenicol (CAP) antibiotics in animal feeds has been developed based on subcritical water extraction (SWE) without further sample clean-up followed by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with ultraviolet (UV) detection. On extracting target antibiotics from spiked samples, the efficiency of the water extraction device was evaluated in terms of pH and volume of the extractant, temperature and time of the static extraction. The best extraction conditions were obtained by using 5.5 mL of water adjusted to pH 2 with hydrochloric acid as the extractant at 100 °C with 5-min static extraction. After filtration, 20 μL of the aqueous extract was directly injected into the HPLC column. Recoveries between 82.1% and 90.0% with relative standard deviations ranging between 1.6% and 4.8% were achieved from spiked animal feed samples by using this method. Compared with the traditional ultrasonic extraction, this procedure was remarkably more efficient in extracting OTC, TC and CAP, simpler to perform, and there was no use of toxic organic solvents.