Rapid determination of 25 drug residues in aquatic products by ultra performance liquid chromatography-quadrupole/electrostatic field orbitrap high resolution mass spectrometry

An ultra performance liquid chromatography-quadrupole/electrostatic field orbitrap high resolution mass spectrometry (UPLC-Q Orbitrap HRMS) method was developed for the rapid screening of 25 drug residues in aquatic products by the application of a novel enhanced matrix removal of lipids (EMR-Lipid). The samples were extracted with acetonitrile, cleaned. up with EMR-Lipid, and salted out with 3.0 g sodium chloride and 3.0 g sodium sulfate. The separation of the 25 drug residues was performed on an ACQUITY UPLC BEH C18 column (100 mm x 2.1 mm, 1.7 mu m) with gradient elution. Acetonitrile containing 0.1% (v/v) formic acid and 0.1% (v/v) formic acid aqueous solution were used as mobile phases. The compounds were detected by Full scan/date dependent MS/MS (Full MS/dd-MS2) via heated electrospray ionization (HESI) source. The calibration curves were linear with correlation coefficients (r) greater than 0.997. The limits of detection (LODs) ranged from 0.1 mu g/kg to 1.0 mu g/kg. The average spiked recoveries of the 25 target compounds were between 70.1% and 108.9% with relative standard derivations (RSDs) from 2.1% to 13.8%. Compared with the previous methods, this method has characteristics of simpler sample preparation and higher sensitivity.