Improved method for the on-line metal chelate affinity chromatography high-performance liquid chromatographic determination of tetracycline antibiotics in animal products

An improved on-line metal chelate affinity chromatography-high-performance Liquid chromatography (MCAC-HPLC) method for the determination of tetracycline antibiotics in anima! tissues and egg has been developed. Extraction was carried out with ethyl acetate. The extract was then evaporated to dryness and reconstituted in methanol prior to on-line MCAC clean-up and HPLC-W determination. Recoveries of tetracycline, oxytetracycline, demeclocycline and chlortetracycline in the range 42% to 101% were obtained from egg, poultry, fish and venison tissues spiked at 25 mu g kg(-1). Limits of detection less than 10 mu g kg(-1) were estimated for all four analytes. This method has higher throughput, higher recovery and lower Limits of detection than a previously reported on-line MCAC-HPLC method which involved aqueous extraction and solid-phase extraction clean-up. Crown Copyright (C) 1998 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.