Validation method for the determination of sulfonamide residues in bovine milk by HPLC

A simple, rapid, sensitive and reliable high-performance liquid chromatographic method for the simultaneous determination of eight sulfonamides (SAs) in bovine milk was developed (sulfadiazine, sulfathiazole, sulfamethazine, sulfamethoxypyriclazine, sufamonomethoxine, sulfamethoxazole, sulfaclimethoxine and sulfaquinoxaline) in bovine milk was developed. Samples were prepared by extraction with ethyl acetate and cleaning-up with an anion solid-phase extraction (SPE) column. Analytical separation was performed on an Inertsil ODS-3 column with photodiode-array detection at 270 nm under gradient condition. The whole procedure was evaluated according to the European Commission Decision 2002/657/EC. Specificity, decision limit (CC alpha), detection capacity (CC/beta), trueness and precision were determined during the validation process. It was found that the analytes were isolated from spiked samples with good recoveries between 70.5 and 89.0%. The used analytical conditions allow to successively separating all the tested sulfonamides with good limit of detection between 0.8 and 1.5 pg L-1.