Simultaneous determination of aminoglycoside antibiotics in feeds using high performance liquid chromatography with evaporative light scattering detection

Abstract

A sensitive, rapid and reproducible method has been developed based on high performance liquid chromatography with evaporative light scattering detection (HPLC-ELSD) for the simultaneous detection of ten aminoglycoside antibiotics including apramycin, neomycin, amikacin, and gentamicin. The influence of parameters of ELSD on the responses of aminoglycosides was investigated in detail. The target analytes were separated well on a Hypersil BDS C₁₈ column based on ion-pair chromatography. The proposed method was applied to the determination of eight drugs in various animal feeds. Calibration curves of eight aminoglycosides were linear (r ≥ 0.997) within the range of 2.00–200 μg mL⁻¹. The recoveries of eight aminoglycosides from 5 types of animal feeds ranged from 61.2% to 104.0% and the intra- and inter-day relative standard deviations were less than 15%. The limits of detection of the eight aminoglycoside drugs were between 0.2 and 0.7 mg kg⁻¹.