Quantification of water-soluble vitamins in milk-based infant formulae using biosensor-based assays

Vitamin analysis is essential for quality control and development of functional foods. In this study, a biosensor-based technology developed by Biacore AB was evaluated for analysis of water-soluble vitamins B₂, B₁₂, folic acid, biotin, and pantothenic acid used to supplement infant formula samples. Performance parameters such as accuracy, repeatability and recovery for the five vitamins were studied. The repeatability was measured in terms of relative standard deviation (RSD) and HORRAT_r value. The RSD for all vitamins was below 2% and the values of HORRAT_r were 0.16, 0.10, 0.15, 0.11 and 0.22, for B₂, B₁₂, folic acid, biotin, and pantothenic acid, respectively. The recovery of vitamins ranged from 94.7% to 109.1%. Linear analyses indicated that the square of the correlation coefficient (R²) for B₂, B₁₂, folic acid, biotin, and pantothenic acid were 0.993, 0.997, 0.993, 0.993 and 0.995, respectively. The results showed that the biosensor-based vitamin analysis technology is a sensitive, reliable and realistic alternative to other methods.