Abstract:

A method for the determination of chloramphenicol in propolis was developed by high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. The flavones were removed with lead acetate solution after the extraction of the sample with water. The extract was cleaned up by liquid-liquid extraction. Internal standard method was used for quantitative analysis. The linear range was 0.05~2.0 μg/L and the correlation coefficient (r2) was 0.9996. The limit of detection (LOD, S/N=3) and limit of quantitation (LOQ, S/N=10) were 0.1 μg/kg and 0.3 μg/kg, respectively. The recoveries ranged from 70.1% to 94.0% while the intra-day precision lower than 10% and inter-day precision lower than 15%. The method reduced the interference by removing most of the flavones and was suitable for the determination of chloramphenicol in propolis.

Key words: chloramphenicol, propolis, high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS/MS)