Determination of eight kinds of glucocorticoids residues in chicken muscle with on-line clean up combined HPLC-MS/MS

A sensitive and rapid method using HPLC-MS/MS was developed for the determination of eight glucocorticoids residues in chicken muscle simultaneously by Turbo Flow. The eight glucocorticoids were prednisone, prednisolone, hydrocortisone, methylprednisolone, dexamethasone, betamethasone, beclomethasone and fludrocortisones. Samples were extracted with ethyl acetate and on-line cleaned up through a Turbo Flow solid-phase extraction column without time-consuming pretreatment before HPLC-MS/MS analysis. Sample pretreatment conditions, Turbo Flow conditions and mass spectral parameters were optimized and obtained eight glucocorticoids calibration curves. These curves showed good linearity over the concentration from 0.2 μg/kg to 50 μg/kg with an average recovery from 71.63% to 117.36%. This method could be applied on real samples and provided simple, rapid, sensitive and highly selective analysis, which made it feasible to be adopted in food inspection organizations or carry out quantitative analysis for other banned substance.