Simultaneous determination of β-agonists and psychiatric drugs in feeds by LC-MS-MS

A method was developed for the simultaneous determination of nine β-agonists (cimaterol, ractopamine, terbutaline, zilpaterol, salbutamol, clenbuterol, mabuterol, bambuterol and brombuterol) and six psychiatric drugs (diazepam, nitrazepam, oxazepam, chlorpromazine, promethazine and perphenazine) in animal feed by using solid-phase extraction (SPE) followed by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS-MS). Conditions were optimized for the extraction of the target analytes from animal feed and for clean-up with MCX SPE cartridges. The eluent was evaporated to dryness under nitrogen, and the residue was dissolved in a solution of acetonitrile and 1% formic acid (2:8, v/v) and analyzed by LC-MS-MS using an isotopic internal standard for quantification. Under the optimum conditions, the recovery values of the target analytes were between 70.1 and 110%, with coefficients of variation between 1.9 and 18.4%. The method was very reliable for the simultaneous determination of nine β-agonists and six psychiatric drugs in animal feed.