New selective product for the multi-residue extraction of fluoroquinolones from food
A simple, fast, selective and sensitive solid phase extraction (SPE) product has been developed for confirmation and quantitation of FQL residues in food samples.
FQL's comprise a group of broad-spectrum antibacterial agents widely used in human medicine and to treat infections in farmed fish, shrimp, turkeys, pigs, calves and poultry. When used to treat animals, FQL's may end up in the human food chain causing allergic reactions while at the same time encouraging development of resistant bacteria. Monitoring these substance residues at trace levels is therefore regulated by law.
The EU has set strict Maximum Residue Limits (MRL's). The US, Canada and Japan have also set MRL's but for a more limited range of quinolones.
MIP Technologies AB, a company in the development of molecularly imprinted polymers, and Supelco, a division of the Sigma-Aldrich have introduced a new product for multi-residue extraction of FQL's that has been validated for sarafloxacin, norfloxacin, enrofloxacin and ciprofloxacin
The four different FQL's; sarafloxacin, norfloxacin, enrofloxacin and ciprofloxacin were extracted from bovine kidney, milk and honey with high and reproducible recoveries.
The precision of the methods are high with a relative standard deviation (RSD) below 10% for all compounds studied.
"SupelMIP SPE-Fluoroquinolones is a fast and straightforward SPE method using a molecularly imprinted polymer. With this simple, single SPE cartridge method, the same limits of quantitation level are reached as competitor methods which require use of multiple SPE cartridge steps," said Dr Christine Widstrand, chief business officer at MIP Technologies.
SupelMIP is a trademark of Supelco, the worldwide product distributor.