Cerium Oxide Adsorption Efficiency of Antimicrobial Drugs in Water Using High Performance Liquid Chromatography

Antimicrobials drugs like fluoroquinolones and sulpha drugs are used across the world for both human and veterinary applications to treat and prevent pathogen growth thus protecting public safety. Among this, broad spectrum antibiotics such as fluoroquinolones and sulpha drugs are employed in the farming industry to reduce bacterial infection and promote healthy growth of poultry and cattle. Despite their ability to control infections these agents are often excreted intact enabling them to leach through soil onto the water table enabling the risk for bacterial resistance and release of potentially harmful by products. Moreover, these substances are associated with some rare but serious secondary effects that can affect some human body systems: cardiovascular, musculoskeletal, endocrine, renal and central nervous systems. This study analyzes the use of cerium oxide nanoparticles adsorption efficiency of sulfadiazine, levofloxacin, and ciprofloxacin. High Performance Liquid Chromatography was used as the technique for the analysis and validation of the method, evaluating linearity, reproducibility and accuracy for the abovementioned antimicrobials. Results demonstrate effective validation of the method with excellent values correlation factors close to 1 and accuracy. Most of the reproducibility results are under the acceptance criteria of relative standard deviation (%RSD <5). The percent of removal of the cerium oxide nanoparticles filters were 98.28% for sulfadiazine, 90.12% for levofloxacin, and 94.32% for ciprofloxacin. Drug removal plots showing the adsorption efficiency of each antimicrobials drugs will be presented.