Evaluation of a commercial enzymatic test kit regarding the quantitative analysis of different free fatty acids

The quantitative determination of the total free fatty acids (FFAs) is an important analytical task because FFAs exhibit important physiological effects and are also relevant in many other fields, for instance, in food research. Our aim was to investigate whether a commercially available enzymatic test kit developed for the determination of FFAs in human serum is also suitable to determine different physiological and nonphysiological FFAs and to which extent the impact on the sensitivities (i.e., the accuracy by which a given FFA can be determined) differ. It will be shown that the chain length as well as the double bond content has a significant impact on the sensitivity by which a given FFA can be determined. For instance, palmitic acid (16:0) is determined with an approximately 20 times higher sensitivity in comparison to docosahexaenoic acid (22:6n-3). All data were obtained by measuring the concentrations of the FFAs by gas chromatography, and selected FFAs were also determined in a complex matrix of human serum. It is concluded that this kit is not useful if major alterations of the FFA composition of a complex mixture are expected because the individual FFAs are not detected with the same sensitivities: the concentrations of polyunsaturated FFA determined by this kit are wrong.