Determination of neomycin in animal tissues, using ion-pair liquid chromatography with fluorometric detection

A liquid chromatographic (LC) method is described for the determination of neomycin in animal tissues. Tissues are homogenized in 0.2M potassium phosphate buffer (pH 8.0); the homogenate is centrifuged, and the supernate is heated to precipitate the protein. The heat-deproteinated extract is acidified to pH 3.5-4 and directly analyzed by LC. The LC method consists of an ion-pairing mobile phase, a reverse phase ODS column, post-column derivatization with o-phthalaldehyde reagent, and fluorometric detection. The LC method uses paromomycin as an internal standard, and separates neomycin from streptomycin or dihydrostreptomycin because they have different retention times. The LC column separates neomycin in 25 min; the detection limit is about 3.5 ng neomycin. The overall recovery of neomycin from kidney tissues spiked at 1-30 ppm was 96% with a 9.0% coefficient of variation. The method was also applied to muscle tissue.