Determination of 8 steroid hormones in meat and meat products by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS)

Steroid hormones and endocrine compounds play an important role in regulating body physiology, however, they can pose potential risk to environmental and human health. In this study, a liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) method was developed to simultaneously analyze eight steroid hormones (i.e., boldenone, boldenone-17-alpha, progesterone, testosterone, melengestrol acetate, zeranol, trenbolone acetate, trenbolone-17-alpha ) in meat and meat products. Samples were extracted using the QuEChERS method with acetonitrile (ACN) as solvent and and clean-up procedure using PSA and C18 sorbent combined with MgSO₄. The conditions for hormone separation on the LC-MS/MS system included a C18 reversed-phase column (2.1 × 150 mm, 3.5 µm) with a mobile phase of 0.1% formic acid and 10 mM ammonium formate in water and ACN using gradient elution and flow rate 0.5 mL/min. The analytical method had good specificity with a linear range (R2 > 0.99) from 1-10 ng/mL, recovery of the substances reached 70.1-115%, relative standard deviation (RSD%) in the range of 1.23-12.1%. The limit of quantification of all eight substances was 1.0 µg/kg. The method was applied to determine 8 hormones in 20 meat and meat product samples in Hanoi. The analytical results showed that none of the 8 steroid hormone analytes were detected in all samples.