Quantification of anthelmintic drug residues in milk and muscle tissues by liquid chromatography coupled to Orbitrap and liquid chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry

A simple method for the determination of some anthelmintic drugs and phenylbutazone residues in milk and muscle was developed. Following a fast and easy extraction and evaporation procedure, the extract was injected into an ultra performance liquid chromatography system coupled to a single stage Orbitrap detector. The high mass resolution of 50,000 full width at half maximum and corresponding narrow mass windows permitted a very selective and sensitive detection of analytes without requiring fragmentation of the observed [M+H]+ or [M+Na]+ ions. This eliminated some difficulties which have plagued the analysis of compounds belonging to the group of avermectins. The analytical method was validated according to the EU commission decision for Orbitrap based, but also for more traditional tandem mass spectrometry based detection and quantification. Equal repeatability but significantly higher sensitivity for critical compounds (avermectins) was obtained for the Orbitrap based detection. A result of this study was the conclusion that analytes with poor fragmentation properties (e.g. sodium-cationized molecules) can be more easily quantified by single stage high resolution mass spectrometry than by tandem mass spectrometry.