CE determination of quinolones in the presence of bovine serum albumin

This article describes the influence of bovine serum albumin (BSA) as an additive on the capillary electrophoresis-potential gradient determination of five quinolones, enoxacin, norfloxacin, ofloxacin, fleroxacin, and pazufloxacin. With 10 mg/L of BSA present in the buffer of 30 mM Tris and :3 mM phosphoric acid at pH 9, the detection limits of the five quinolones were in the range of 0.24-0.68 mg/L, i.e. 5.8-16.5-fold lower than those obtained with the buffer devoid of BSA, and the analysis time was shortened. We suggest that the inner wall-adsorbed BSA suppresses the adsorption of quinolones and simultaneously enhances the electroosmotic flow rate. Our experiments indicated that adopting the potential gradient detection technique could eliminate the interference of the UV-active proteins on the detection of quinolones that would occur with conventional optical detection, and therefore offer high detection sensitivity. As a demonstration, the method was applied to the determination of QNs in fortified chicken muscle sample with satisfactory results.