Simultaneous determination of eight tetracyclines in cattle hair using UPLC-QTRAP/MS: A novel non-invasive strategy for veterinary drug residue

The environmental residues caused by the abuse of tetracycline antibiotics (TCS) in animal husbandry threaten ecology and human health through the food chain, but the traditional biological matrix (such as blood and urine) is difficult to achieve long-term drug monitoring due to its strong invasiveness and short metabolic cycle. In this study, a high sensitivity method based on UPLC-Qtrap/MS was established, using bovine hair as a non-invasive detection matrix, which can simultaneously detect eight tetracycline antibiotics. The method validation showed that the linear correlation coefficient was>0.999, the recovery was 82.79 – 98.55%, the coefficient of variation was<15%, the limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantification (LOQ) were 0.3 ng/kg and 1.0 ng/kg, respectively, which was significantly better than the existing methods. The method was successfully applied to a pilot study of 50 cattle hair samples from the northern region of Xinjiang, China, demonstrating its practical applicability. The microstructure, chemical composition and possible metabolic pathways into the hair after treatment with tetracycline were briefly investigated.The result and research shows that cattle hair can stably enrich drug residues for a long time, which provides an innovative solution for tracing illegal drug use in animal husbandry, and provides technical support for the formulation of new drug regulatory standards and environmental health risk assessment.