Abuse of antibiotics as well as antibiotic residues cause great harm to living beings and the environment. However, determination of antibiotics is quite difficult owing to the low residue level and multiple categories presence in the complicated matrices. Proper sample pretreatment is usually imperative for coupling with chromatographic analysis toward the sensitive determination of antibiotic residues. Molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) possess the binding sites complementary to the target (template) molecules in shape, size, and type of functional groups. Hence, MIPs can selectively recognize and effectively enrich the target analytes as well as eliminate matrix interferences. For this reason, they have been widely applied in the sample pretreatment of antibiotics. In this review, several challenges encountered with the use of MIPs and the possible solutions are proposed. Besides, advances in the applications of MIPs for the sample pretreatment of antibiotics since 2016 are summarized, mainly including conventional solid phase extraction (SPE), dispersive solid phase extraction (DSPE), magnetic solid phase extraction (MSPE), matrix solid phase dispersion (MSPD), solid phase microextraction (SPME) and stir bar sorptive extraction (SBSE). Some new imprinting strategies for the preparation of MIPs to be used in the field of antibiotics are highlighted, such as multi-template imprinting, multi-functional monomer imprinting, dummy imprinting, stimuli-responsive imprinting and hydrophilic imprinting. Finally, an outlook on the preparation and pretreatment application of MIPs for antibiotics is presented.
Keywords: antibiotics; imprinting strategy; molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs); review; sample pretreatment; solid phase extraction (SPE).