Journal Appraisal for UMBI Research Update Series
By: Junaida Osman (Email: jun@ppukm.ukm.edu.my)
Last week, I was given the opportunity to present on a Journal Appraisal for UMBI weekly presentation activity. The journal that I chose to appraise is specifically looking at the Vitamin D analysis using HPLC. The name of the journal is ‘’. This journal was written and done by Mohamed Abdulla Abu El Maaty et al. It was published in Journal of Chromatographic Science in 2015.
In a brief, what this journal wanted to highlight is that, even though the LC-MS is considered the gold standard for the determination of Vitamin D (25-hydroxyvitamin-D3, 25-hydroxyvitamin-D2, Vitamin D3 and Vitamin D2) but due to its expensive settings; HPLC with UV detection is the best choice rather than kits assay. However, chromatographic method development can be a time consuming and subjective process, thus these researchers had applied a systematic way. In other word, a systemic computer-assisted way to put an end to irrelevant trials for more optimization.
These researchers had developed and optimised a new HPLC method using DryLab® 2000 application and manage to achieve best resolution with least runtime for 25-hydroxyvitamin D of less than 10min. They further validated these method and analysed 46 samples along with an ELISA kit to compare results. What they found was that, HPLC able to detect variation among the subjects but not ELISA thus concluded that HPLC-UV is the better tool in determining Vitamin D status than ELISA.
I would say that the systematic Design-of-Experiment is relevant and really helpful in developing an HPLC method. It allows generation of an infinite number of predictive chromatograms by changing different chromatographic parameters through the software. This would definitely save a lot of time, buffers and standards used, when compared to the conventional method development; where mostly were done using a manual, one-factor-at-a-time processes. This is what it appeals to me in the first place why I chose this journal. In my personal experience, it took me about 8 months to successfully complete the whole method development, optimization and validation. Only after that, analysis can be done on the research samples.
Despite the usefulness of using this approach, I think a lot of improvement can be done. These include modifications of the mobile phase composition to obtain a better peak resolution and shorter runtime, and further testing on the extraction methods to achieve higher recovery. In terms of the validation processes and quality controls, the researchers can perform and report them better in this journal if they choose a validation guidelines recommendation in the beginning and follow it accordingly. This would definitely increase the reliability and value of the method proposed.