Development of a Method for Screening Spill and Leakage of Antibiotics on Surfaces Based on Wipe Sampling and HPLC-MS/MS Analysis

Abstract

A screening method for determination of spill and leakage of twelve different antibiotic substances has been developed. The method is based on wipe sampling where the sampling procedure has been simplified for screening purposes. After sample processing, the antibiotic substances are determined by liquid chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS/MS). Twelve antibiotic substances can be determined in the screening method:Cefadroxil, Cefalexin, Ciprofloxacin, Demeclocyklin HCl, Diaveridin, Doxycyklin, Enrofloxacin, Flukonazol, Metronidazol, Norfloxacin, Ofloxacin and Trimetoprim. These substances are active components in antibiotic drugs frequently used in Sweden. For screening investigations using collection of wipe samples, good or acceptable performance was obtained for ten substances on three or more surface materials. Although not fully acceptable, useful performance for screening purposes was also obtained on the other surface materials and for the other substances, except Demeclocyklin HCl, on all surface materials.By employing a classification procedure, where the samples are divided into groups according to increasing contamination of the sample surfaces, screening samples and the contamination level can simply be compared. This classification procedure will also help to circumvent any deficiency in recovery performance for some substances and surface materials.