Abstract
Determination of blood and urinary pantothenic acid levels are important to assess pantothenic acid status. The microbiological assay using Lactobacillus plantarum remains to be the most practical method for measurement of pantothenic acid levels in the blood, urine and food. Although several methods are available including radioimmunoassay, ELISA, HPLC, GC/MS, LC/MS and optical biosensor-based immunoassay, these methods are restricted to use. Major reason is that little interest has existed for assessing pantothenic acid deficiency. The radioimmunoassay and ELISA lack sensitivity, and need noncommercially available antisera. GC/MS requires a derivatization step to be volatile enough for GC. Although the HPLC-fluorimetric method and LC/MS show high sensitivity and selectivity to determine low level of pantothenic acid in the blood, these methods require further development. More biological data for pantothenic acid status will be required for setting pantothenic acid requirement.
