Determination of vitamin A (retinol) in infant and medical nutritional formulas with AOAC method 992.06 using a...

The applicability of AOAC Official Method 992.06, vitamin A (retinol) in milk-based infant formula can be extended to specialty infant formulas, and medical and adult nutritional products with a few minor modifications to the sample preparation procedure. Currently, AOAC Official Method 992.06 is only applicable to milk-based infant formulas containing >500 IU vitamin A per reconstituted quart. When this method is used as written to test specialty infant formulas, vitamin A recoveries are low compared to results generated with alternate validated vitamin A methods. AOAC Method 992.06 vitamin A recoveries can be improved significantly in specialty infant formulas if the amount of potassium hydroxide used during the saponification step is doubled. With this one minor modification to the sample preparation procedure, AOAC Method 992.06 demonstrates acceptable precision and accuracy for the quantitation of vitamin A (retinol) in specialty infant formulas, milk- and soy-based infant formulas, and adult and medical nutritionals. Because increasing the amount of potassium hydroxide can cause emulsions to form, 2-4 mL aliquots of reagent alcohol may need to be added to some samples to separate the organic and aqueous layers during the extraction step. A single-laboratory validation of these modifications was completed. During validation, 15 different product matrixes were analyzed. The intermediate precision averaged 2.70% RSD, and spike recovery data averaged 96.3%.