Mass spectrometric identification and quantification of the antibiotic clavulanic acid in broiler chicken plasma and meat as a necessary analytical tool in finding ways to increase the effectiveness of currently used antibiotics in the treatment of broiler chickens.

Clavulanic acid is a molecule with antimicrobial effect used in several livestock species treatment. Its inclusion in the treatment of infectious diseases of broilers requires determination of pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic parameters in order to determine the appropriate dosage for broilers and ensure safety of chicken products for human health. The present study describes the optimisation of analytical LC-MS/MS method for identification and quantification of clavulanic acid in broiler chicken plasma and meat. The limit of detection and the limit of quantification for the developed method were 3.09 μg·L(-1) and 10.21 μg·L(-1) for plasma and 2.57 μg·kg(-1) and 8.47 μg·kg(-1) for meat. The recoveries of the developed plasma and tissue extraction procedure were > 105.7% and > 95.6%, respectively. The achieved coefficient of variation of within-run precision ranged from 2.8 to 10.9% for plasma and from 6.5 to 8.5% for meat. The pharmacokinetic experiment was performed in 112 Ross broiler chickens assigned into time interval groups ranging from 10 min to 24 h in accredited animal facilities. Administered dose of clavulanic acid was 2.5 mg·kg(-1) according to the manufacturer's recommendations. The pharmacokinetic parameters obtained from the experiment are as follows: C(max) = 1.82 ± 0.91 mg·L(-1), T(max) = 0.25 h, T(1/2) = 0.87 h, K(el) = 0.80 ± 0.04 h(-1), AUC(0-∞) = 2.17 mg·h ·L(-1).