Abstract

Antibiotics are widely used as therapeutic, prophylactic and as growth promoting agents. The indiscriminate use of antibiotics will result in accumulation of these antibiotics/their metabolites in various tissues like muscle, liver and kidney. Consumption of meat of treated birds during withdrawal period would result in health hazards like antibiotic resistance in the consumers. The present study was carried out to develop a simple and sensitive method for the determination of oxytetracycline (OTC) residue in serum of poultry. The assay was performed on twelve broiler chicks which were maintained on a standard diet for one month. On 31st day, long acting OTC was injected @10mg/kg body weight intramuscularly (three times at three day interval) for the treatment group (6 birds) and rest of the birds were kept as control. Blood samples were collected on the first day and 7th day after the last treatment. Serum was separated and Ultra High Performance Liquid Chromatography (UHPLC) was performed by isocratic elution, with a flow-rate of 1.0 ml/min, and UV detection at 360 nm. A noticeable amount of OTC residue could be detected in all the samples on first day while on 7th day only two samples out of six showed antibiotic residue. The method is simple, rapid and very sensitive for the determination of OTC residue in serum samples.

Keywords : Antibiotics, OTC, UHPLC, Serum, Poultry