LC-MS/MS Method for Detecting Antibiotic Residues in Seafood Products

Since 1950s world aquaculture production has grown rapidly all around the world. In the year 2022, for the first time world aquaculture production has reached up to 130.9 million tons surpassing capture fisheries (FAO, 2024). Antibiotics play a critical role in food security and animal welfare, as they are used to combat infectious diseases. The misused of antibiotics increases the risk of antimicrobial resistance in animal thereby impacting the effectiveness of antibiotics in the treatment of disease (Santos and Ramos, 2018). Another serious issue of misusing antibiotics is that they cause serious problems for the environment and human health. About 70% of the antibiotic residues in the aquatic ponds get discharged into surrounding waters bodies or sediments. At the same time, residues of these compounds retained in animal tissues meant for human consumption (Chang et al., 2025). Looking into these issued faced by using antibiotics, only few antibiotics are approved to be used in food systems with limited quantity in aquaculture systems and clear guidelines for its uses are also laid down internationally. However, excessive or misuse of antibiotic have been recorded in aquaculture farms. These necessitate the periodic testing of the farm animal and food products for antibiotic residues. The analytical methods for monitoring antibiotic residues can be classified in two groups i.e. screening and confirmatory. The screening three most important screening approaches to detect antibiotic residues in food samples are immunoassays, microbiological tests and biosensors (Cháfer-Pericás et al., 2010). The confirmatory methods are mostly based on chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (MS). Some of the prominent are high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC–MS), liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). Therefore, in this article, one of the highly advanced technique, Liquid Chromatography Tandem Mass Spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) and sample preparation method for detecting banned antibiotic, Chloramphenicol residues are being discuss.