Simultaneous determination of 14 antiviral drugs and relevant metabolites in chicken muscle by UPLC-MS/MS after QuEChERS preparation

A fast method for the simultaneous determination of 14 antiviral drugs and relevant metabolites in chicken muscle by ultra-high liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS) was developed. The analytes included anti-influenza drugs (amantadine, rimantadine, oseltamivir, oseltamivir carboxylate, memantine, arbidol, and moroxydine), anti-herpes drugs (acyclovir, ganciclovir, famciclovir, penciclovir, ribavirin and its main metabolite TCONH2), and an immunomodulator (imiquimod). The samples were pretreated using a modified QuEChERS (Quick, Easy, Cheap, Effective, Rugged and Safe) method. The determination of the target compounds was conducted in less than 11.0 min, and specificity was ensured by the use of multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) acquisition mode. Good linearities (R2 > 0.9928) were obtained in the range of 0.1-100 μg/L, and the recovery rates were 56.2-113.4% with RSDs of 1.7-10.3% for intra-day precision and 2.4-8.8% for inter-day precision. The LODs and LOQs of all analytes were in the ranges of 0.02-1.0 and 0.05-2.5 μg/kg, respectively. An analysis of real samples suggested that this method is simple, sensitive, reliable and practical for the detection of antiviral drugs in animal tissue.