Quantitative determination of the different higher saturated fatty acids in fat from blood, chyle and faeces, by means of partition chromatography on rubber.

In the study of fat metabolism, it is important to examine the behaviour of each constituent fatty acid of the ingested fat under investigation. For this purpose a method is necessary by which a quantitative determination of each of the different saturated and unsaturated fatty acids can be carried out, not only in the fat ingested but also in the fat of the blood, chyle and faeces. Reversedphase partition chromatography according to Boldingh (1950, 1953) was found to be very satisfactory for the analysis of the higher saturated fatty acids. With this method it is possible to obtain an accurate quantitative analysis of a mixture of 10 mg. of each of the higher saturated fatty acids from hexanoic to tetracosanoic. A description is given in this article of the quantitativedeterminationofthedifferentsaturated fatty acids in blood serum, chyle and faeces. The blood-fat analysis has been carried out with blood fat from normal healthy adults. The other data have been chosen from an investigation of the fat in the chyle of a patient with a chylothorax after the consumption of various fats (Femandes, Kamer & Weijers, 1955), and from an investigation of faecal fat in patients with coeliac disease and pancreatic fibrosis, whose diet contained different fats during different experimental periods (Weijers & Kamer, in preparation).