Scientific Opinion on Dietary Reference Values for fats, including saturated fatty acids, polyunsaturated fatty acids, monounsaturated fatty acids, trans fatty acids, and cholesterol

Fatty acid status determination by cheek cell sampling combined with methanol-based ultrasound extraction of glycerophospholipids

Tissue and blood fatty acid compositions are used as biological markers of fatty acid intakes to improve dietary assessments. These approaches are invasive and not well accepted, particularly in infants and young children. We developed a sensitive method for the analysis of fatty acids in cheek cell glycerophospholipids, which includes significant improvements of cell sampling, non-chromatographic isolation of glycerophospholipids and base-catalyzed synthesis of fatty acid methyl esters. Sphingophospholipids are not detected by this method. This enables a highly accurate determination of cheek cell glycerophospholipid fatty acids, even if cell numbers are limited. Coefficients of variation for fatty acids contributing more than 0.3% to total glycerophospholipid fatty acids are below 10% in samples with more than 10(5) cells. Good correlations were shown between docosahexaenoic and eicosapentaenoic acid percentages in cheek cell and plasma glycerophospholipids (r = 0.83 and 0.64, respectively; P < 0.001) with a linear relationship over the whole concentration range observed in adult study participants (n = 29). Cheek cell sampling is non-invasive and can easily be applied in infants. The accuracy and reliability of this new method is comparable to conventional invasive methods for the determination of the n-3 fatty acid status in humans, and it is well applicable in interventional or epidemiological studies.