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Abstract
A fast and simple extraction procedure was developed for simultaneous determination in bovine liver of two veterinary drugs, widely used as growth promoters in meat production: dexamethasone (a synthetic corticosteroid drug) and clenbuterol (a beta2‐adrenergic agonist drug). Liver samples were extracted by acetonitrile, without any clean‐up step. Two different ELISAs, specific for the two classes of drugs, were used to determine the residue concentration in the extracts. The intra‐ and inter‐extraction variability was determined at different concentrations: the intra‐extraction coefficients of variation (CVs) were between 2.5 and 17.7% for dexamethasone and between 0.9 and 9.8% for clenbuterol; the inter‐extraction CVs were between 2.0 and 16.8% for dexamethasone and between 0.5 and 10.8% for clenbuterol. Recovery ranged from 92 to 154% for dexamethasone and from 78 to 105% for clenbuterol. The limit of detection was 1.43 ng g−1 and 0.43 ng g−1, respectively. The limit of quantification for dexamethasone was 2.09 ng g−1 and for clenbuterol was 0.72 ng g−1. The combination of the new extraction procedure with an ELISA detection permitted the rapid semi‐quantitative determination of both dexamethasone at its maximum residue level (MRL: 2.5 ng g−1 in liver tissue), and clenbuterol at low concentration level.