Development of a quantitative fluorescence-based lateral flow immunoassay for determination of chloramphenicol, thiamphenicol and florfenicol in milk

Abstract

A competitive lateral flow immunoassay (LFA) using fluorescent microspheres (FMs) as label was developed for the quantitative detection of chloramphenicol (CAP), thiamphenicol (TAP) and florfenicol (FF) in milk. The limit of detection (LOD) for CAP, TAP and FF in milk was 0.08, 0.8 and 1.9 μg L−1, respectively. The recovery of intra and inter-assay ranged from 87.7% to 107.0% and 82.5% to 112.3%, with corresponding coefficient of variations less than 11.3% and 14.5%, respectively. The sensitivity of the FMs lateral flow assay (FMs-LFA) was comparable to those of the colloidal gold lateral flow assay. A quantitative comparison of the FMs-LFA and LC–MS/MS analysis of milk samples indicated good agreement between the two methods. The FMs-LFA can be used as a reliable, rapid and cost-effective method for food safety analysis.