Abstract: A liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometric (LC-MS/MS) method was established for simultaneous determination of albendazole and its metabolites including albendazole sulfone, albendazole sulfoxide and albendazole-2-aminosulfone in meat. Samples were extracted with acetonitrile and cleaned by liquid-liquid extraction. The separation of analytes was performed on an XDB-C18 column with acetonitrile and 0.1% formic acid solution as the mobile phase. The external standard calibration curve was used for quantification. The LOD of albendazole and its metabolites was 0.010 mg/kg. A good linear relationship between peak area and concentration in the range of 0.010－0.050 mg/kg for albendazole and its metabolites was achieved with a correlation coefficient of more than 0.99. The spiked recovery rates and relative standard deviations (RSDs) were 82.3%－97.6% and 4.9%－12.9%, respectively. The method was simple, fast, accurate, convenient, and applicable for qualitative and quantitative determination of albendazole and its metabolites.

Key words: albendazole, metabolites, LC-MS/MS, meat