Analysis of short-chain fatty acids in human feces: A scoping review

Short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) play a crucial role in maintaining homeostasis in humans, therefore the importance of a good and reliable SCFAs analytical detection has raised a lot in the past few years. The aim of this scoping review is to show the trends in the development of different methods of SCFAs analysis in feces, based on the literature published in the last eleven years in all major indexing databases. The search criteria included analytical quantification techniques of SCFAs in different human clinical and in vivo studies. SCFAs analysis is still predominantly performed using gas chromatography (GC), followed by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and capillary electrophoresis (CE). Performances, drawbacks and advantages of these methods are discussed, especially in the light of choosing a proper pretreatment, as feces is a complex biological material. Further optimization to develop a simple, cost effective and robust method for routine use is needed.