Abstract
Sulfonamide antibiotics are a class of chemotherapeutics widely used in human and veterinary medicine to treat bacterial infections, and they’re widely used to inhibit the growth of bacteria. As antibiotics, they are designed to be biologically active, and their presence in water bodies raises concerns as they pose serious ecological and public health issues. Due to their chemical stability, they can linger in the environment after being released since standard water treatment procedures cannot eliminate them. Their persistence in the aquatic environment poses a risk to aquatic life by contaminating the aquatic habitats, which can disturb microbial communities, impact biodiversity, and cause antimicrobial resistance.
Furthermore, they build up in sources of drinking water, causing prolonged exposure to human health. Since they exist at trace concentrations, eliminating sulfonamide antibiotics from water bodies is essential for maintaining the integrity of aquatic ecosystems as well as safeguarding public health from the dangers posed by antibiotic resistance. Effective removal strategies are critical for reducing the environmental and health implications of these persistent contaminants and guaranteeing safe water for current and future generations. Hence, the fabric phase sorptive extraction (FSPE) was introduced. FPSE is an emerging technique in the field of analytical chemistry, particularly used for the extraction and preconcentration of trace contaminants. FPSE is a simple and user-friendly approach that involves no complex preparation steps, requiring small amount of samples and solvents, making it suitable for high-throughput applications.
The aim of the study was to develop effective analytical method for the extraction of sulfonamides antibiotics from water bodies prior the chromatographic analysis by the high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with diode array detector (HPLC-DAD). The sol-gel polytetrahydrofuran (sol-gel/PTHF) and sol-gel Carbowax 20M (sol-gel CW 20M) membranes were used in FPSE of selected sulfonamide antibiotics (sulfamethoxazole (SMX), sulfamerazine (SMZ) and sulfathiazole (STZ)) in water bodies. The parameters affecting the extraction method were also optimized using design of experimental design approaches such as the fractional factorial and central composite designs.
The FPSE based on sol-gel/PTHF membrane was used for the enrichment of SMX, SMZ and STZ. Under optimized conditions, the FPSE- HPLC-DAD method offered a good linearity (1-700 μg/L, R2>0.99), low limit of detection (LOD = 0.31-0.50 μg/L) and quantification (LOQ = 1.0-1.8 μg/L). The intraday and interday precisions expressed in terms of relative standard deviation (%RSD) ranged from 3.3-4.8% and 3.6-5.7%.
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Furthermore, real water samples spiked at three concentration levels were successfully analysed with sol-gel/PTHF FPSE- HPLC-DAD method and satisfactory recoveries ranging between 78 and 99.5% with low %RSD >10% were obtained
Additionally, the sol-gel CW 20M membrane was used as extraction substrate in the development of FPSE. The sol-gel CW 20M FPSE method was utilized in conjunction with HPLC-DAD to analyse SMX, SMZ and STZ in surface water and wastewater samples. The sol-gel CW 20M FPSE-HPLC-DAD method demonstrated wide linear range (0.25-900 μg/L) with the relatively LOD and LOQ values ranging from 0.074-0.15 and 0.25-0.50 μg/L. The developed method had relatively high enrichment factors ranging from 41.5-43.3. In addition, the determination of the of the target analytes in real water samples were achieved with satisfactory recoveries (81-99.1%), confirming the applicability and the feasibility of the proposed sol-gel CW 20M FPSE-HPLC-DAD method.
In summary, the FPSE- HPLC-DAD methodologies developed in this work offered various advantages, such as simplicity, easy operation, sensitivity, excellent extraction affinity and reusability (up to 10 cycles). Thus, demonstrating that sol-gel/PTHF and sol-gel CW 20M membranes are suitable extraction substrate for the preconcentration of trace sulfonamide antibiotics from complex water matrices. Therefore, it was concluded that these methods has great potential in the analysis and determination of SMX, SMZ and STZ in surface water, effluent and influent wastewater samples.