Tulathromycin is a macrolide antibiotic generally used for the treatment of respiratory diseases in cattle and swine. This work proposes an improvement of a previously published LC-MS/MS method for tulathromycin determination in pig serum, here validated in three different bull matrices: plasma, seminal plasma, and urine. The approach is based on a quick protein precipitation with acetonitrile, filtration, and sample dilution before injection, allowing to rapidly process large batches of samples. Analytes separation was obtained using a BEH C18 (50 × 2.1 mm, 1.7 μm) column, maintained at 40°C with a chromatographic run of 5 min. The method was fully validated over concentration ranges suitable for field levels of tulathromycin found in each matrix (0.01-1 μg/ml for plasma, 0.05-5 μg/ml for seminal plasma, and 0.1-10 μg/ml for urine), showing good linearity during each day of testing (R2 always >0.99). Accuracy and precision were within ±15% at all QC concentrations in all the three matrices. Furthermore, the use of tulathromycine-d7 as internal standard mitigated the potential impacts of matrix effect. The validated technique was successfully applied to samples collected during a pharmacokinetic study in bulls, allowing to monitor tulathromycin concentrations over time in the three matrices. To our knowledge, this is the first validated approach for LC-MS/MS quantification of tulathromycin in seminal plasma and urine.
Keywords: LC-MS; plasma; seminal plasma; tulathromycin; urine.
© 2022 The Authors. Drug Testing and Analysis published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.