Food sample preparation for the determination of sulfonamides by high-performance liquid chromatography: State-of-the-art

Antibiotics are a common practice in veterinary medicine, mainly for therapeutic purposes. Sectors of application include livestock farming, aquacultures and bee-keeping, where bacterial infections are frequent and can be economically damaging. However, antibiotics are usually administered in sub-therapeutic doses as prophylactic and growth promoting agents. Due to their excessive use, antibiotic residues can be present in food of animal origin, such as meat, fish, milk, eggs and honey, posing health risks to consumers. For this reason, authorities have set maximum residue limits (MRLs) of certain antibiotics in food matrices, while analytical methods for their determination have been developed. This work focuses on antibiotic extraction and determination, part of which was presented at the “1st Conference in Chemistry for Graduate, Postgraduate Students and PhD Candidates at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki”. Taking a step further, this paper is a review of the most recent sample preparation protocols applied for the extraction of sulfonamide antibiotics from food samples and their determination with HPLC, covering a five-year period.