Determination of tetracycline antibiotics by reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection.

A highly sensitive method for the determination of tetracycline antibiotics (TCs) using reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection is presented. This method was based on the use of disodium ethylenediaminetetraacetate (EDTA) and calcium chloride as fluorescence-increasing reagents in the mobile phase. The concentrations of each reagent in the mobile phase greatly influenced the fluorescence intensity of TCs. When the concentration of EDTA and calcium chloride were 25 and 35 mM, respectively, and the pH of the mobile phase was 6.5, the maximum fluorescence intensity was obtained. The column temperature hardly influenced the fluorescence intensity. At 3.75 ng of TCs injected, the precision (relative standard deviation) ranged from 1.12 to 2.20%. In the range 0.075-37.5 ng for tetracycline and oxytetracycline and 0.225-37.5 ng for chlortetracycline, a linear response was observed. The detection limits of this method were 49-190 pg for three different TCs. The proposed method was applied to the determination of one of the TCs in pharmaceuticals by the internal standard method using other TCs as internal standards and was also applied to determination of TCs added to fish tissue.