Application of supercritical fluid extraction and high performance liquid chromatography mass spectrometry for the determination of some anabolic agents directly from bovine tissue samples

The aim of the present work was to evaluate the feasibility of supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) of some growth-promoting anabolic steroids directly from bovine tissue samples with carbon dioxide as a supercritical fluid. The study was divided into two phases. The first phase involved the optimization of SFE parameters versus recovery and repeatability. Results were obtained by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) or supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC). The second set of studies consisted of SFE from the real samples monitored by the combination of high performance liquid chromatography atmospheric pressure chemical ionization mass spectrometry (HPLC/APCIMS). The limit of detection was about 10 ppb, but 100 ppb is the practical detection limit for SFE-HPLC/MS analysis under the experimental conditions used in this study. The results from this work suggested that SFE may be useful for isolation of target compounds from complex biological samples.