LC-MS/MS Determination of Antibiotic Residues in Distillers Grains: Method Modification

Background Antibiotics are used in ethanol production to discourage undesirable bacteria growth. To determine if antibiotic residues remain in the distillers grain (DG) byproduct, which is used as an animal food ingredient, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)/Center for Veterinary Medicine previously developed an LC-MS/MS method to detect residues of erythromycin A, penicillin G, virginiamycin M1, and virginiamycin S1 in DG to enable regulatory decision-making. Objective Erythromycin and penicillin G were quantitated using the stable isotope dilution (SID) technique with their isotopically labeled compounds, which are considered optimal internal standards (ISTDs) for quantitative mass spectrometry. With the commercial availability of virginiamycin M1-d(2) since then, the objectives of this study were to evaluate the feasibility of its use as it is only doubly deuterated, and to incorporate it in the method to enhance method performance. Method Antibiotic residues were solvent-extracted from DG; the extract was cleaned up by a hexane wash and solid phase extraction (SPE) and analyzed by LC-MS/MS. Results We established suitability of virginiamycin M1-d(2) as an ISTD and incorporated it in the method. For all analytes, accuracy and precision ranged 90 to 102% and 3.8 to 6.8, respectively. Conclusions We modified a previously developed LC-MS/MS method that uses virginiamycin M1-d(2) as an ISTD to support surveillance studies to determine several drugs in DG.