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Vitamin A (VA) deficiency continues to be a major global health issue, despite measures to increase VA intake via consumption of staple foods such as edible oil. Portable quantitative and semiquantitative devices or test kits for internal quality control have the potential to overcome some of the limitations of traditional methods of testing, such as centralized laboratory, expensive equipment, and specially trained staff. This landscape analysis and comprehensive systematic mini-review catalogs and summarizes evidence on the analytical performance of portable quantitative and semiquantitative devices and test kits for the analysis of VA in edible oil. Studies or reports detailing the usability and validation of portable devices and/or test kits, as well as studies comparing device/test kit performance to a reference standard such as high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), were included. Identified devices and test kits were compared for performance versus the reference standard, usability, availability, and other characteristics. We identified four portable methods: two devices, the iCheck CHROMA and iCheck Chroma 3 from BioAnalyt; and two test kits, the QuickView from Bagco Enterprises and the Strategic Alliance for the Fortification of Vegetable Oils (SAFO) Test Kit by Badische Anilin and Soda Fabrik (BASF). Included studies reported the following: an internal validation of the portable method, a comparison of the portable method against a reference standard, a comparison of the portable method against another portable method, and several videos and company websites, which detailed device characteristics. iCheck CHROMA and QuickView quantified VA concentrations with high accuracy and precision compared to the reference standard for field-based quantification, were user-friendly, and provided results within 5 min. iCheck Chroma 3 requires more robust validation against a reference standard. We did not find data on internal validation or comparison against a reference standard for the current version of the SAFO test. Compared to QuickView and SAFO, the iCheck devices can transfer results to a hard drive or the Web, have an online order form for purchase, and meet a minimal set of criteria for point-of-need devices. iCheck, QuickView, and SAFO can quantify VA concentrations in the edible oils tested and determine whether a fortified oil meets country standards. Additional research is needed to validate these devices and test kits across additional oil types and document the ability to meet the minimal criteria for point-of-need devices suggested in this mini-review. Validation against a reference standard is required for SAFO. The limited number of portable methods available may be due to market saturation. Future market and use case analyses to inform the market size and utility of the different tests with publicly available data will allow new manufacturers, particularly those in lower-to-middle-income countries, to enter the market.
Vitamin A deficiency continues to be a major global health issue, 1 despite measures to increase vitamin A intake via staple foods. Numerous quantitative techniques are available to determine vitamin A concentration in fortified staple products such as edible oils, sugar, and flour. However, most of these analytical techniques require access to a centralized laboratory for preparing samples and performing these tests using equipment such as high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and gas chromatography (GC) coupled with ultraviolet–visible (UV–vis) detection. This equipment is expensive to procure and requires maintenance and consistent usage, reagents and preparation protocols that are resource-intensive, and skilled personnel to run. 1 These methods are also time-consuming and potentially prohibitively expensive depending on the number of samples that need to be analyzed. In addition, trained laboratory personnel who can reliably operate such equipment are hard to find and retain in some settings. Alternative technologies have the potential to make gains in efficiency including costs, training, and maintenance compared to currently used equipment.
Portable quantitative devices or test kits (which output the exact concentration measured) and semiquantitative devices or test kits (which output results falling within a range of possible measurements, ascertained by matching to a color-coded legend) for internal quality control have the potential to overcome some of the limitations of traditional methods of testing. Some portable methods for determining the vitamin contents of fortified oils are available, and they may differ in their cost, accuracy, reliability, ease of use, and requirements of consumables/reagents required to perform the tests. In this mini-review we summarize features and performances of various portable quantitative and semiquantitative methods for vitamin A analysis and identify research and implementation gaps. This mini-review will enable current manufacturers to modify and improve their products and set design goals for new products that meet the current demands of industry, regulators, and other stakeholders.
In this mini-review, our objectives were to (1) catalog all portable semiquantitative and quantitative methods (devices and test kits) available for analysis of vitamin A in edible oil and (2) determine and compare the analytical performance of these devices for the analysis of vitamin A in edible oil. We also describe the roadmap for the development of such devices because they are much needed as global efforts for large scale food fortification gather steam.
From 3258 records (after deduplication) identified from our searches via databases and other methods ( Figure Figure1 1 ), we identified four portable methods: BioAnalyt’s iCheck CHROMA device and iCheck Chroma 3 device, the QuickView Vitamin A Test Kit by Bagco Enterprises, and the Strategic Alliance for the Fortification of Vegetable Oils (SAFO) Test Kit by Badische Anilin and Soda Fabrik (BASF) Test Kit for vitamin A in oil. The numbers and types of reports for each portable method are described below.
