COMPARISON STUDY BETWEEN HPLC AND UHPLC METHODS FOR TESTING THE LEVEL OF AMINO ACID

Abstract

Fitamino product from PT. Novell Pharmaceutical is a product formulated in powder form. This product contains a variety of vitamins and amino acids that aim to meet the nutritional needs of consumers for 12 h. Amino acids contained in the product are Branched Chain Amino Acid (BCAA) consisting of isoleucine, leucine, valine and taurine. In this study, the measurement of amino acid levels was done using different instruments. The instruments used were HPLC (High Performance Liquid Chromatography) and UHPLC (Ultra High Performance Liquid Chromatography). The research was done on preparation stage of test sample and test of sample rate using HPLC and UHPLC. The difference between these two methods lied in the derivatisation process. In HPLC, derivatization process was done manually while in UHPLC derivatization, process was done automatically in UHPLC machine. The results of the test showed that the amino acid content tested by HPLC method was greater than the amino acid level tested by UHPLC method that were: taurin 102.2%; valine 102.6%; isoleucine 95.72%; and leucine 101.79% while in UHPLC method: taurine 79.164%; valine 67.763; isoleucine 67.569%; and leucine 72.107%. The results on this UHPLC method were well below the 85-115% requirement. That was because there were different treatments during the test sample preparation process but the time required for the process to use UHPLC was faster than the HPLC method.