Methodologies for Assessing Pancreatic Lipase Catalytic Activity: A Review.

Obesity is a disease of epidemic proportions with a concerning increasing trend. Regarded as one of the main sources of energy, lipids can also represent a big part of an unnecessary intake of calories and be, therefore, directly related to the problem of obesity. Pancreatic lipase is an enzyme that is essential in the absorption and digestion of dietary fats and has been explored as an alternative for the reduction of fat absorption and consequent weigh loss. Literature describes a great variability of methodologies and experimental conditions used in research to evaluate the in vitro inhibitory activity of compounds against pancreatic lipase. However, in an attempt to choose the best approach, it is necessary to know all the reaction conditions and understand how these can affect the enzymatic assay. The objective of this review is to understand and summarize the methodologies and respective experimental conditions that are mainly used to evaluate pancreatic lipase catalytic activity. 156 studies were included in this work and a detailed description of the most commonly used UV/Vis spectrophotometric and fluorimetric instrumental techniques are presented, including a discussion regarding the differences found in the parameters used in both techniques, namely enzyme, substrate, buffer solutions, kinetics conditions, temperature and pH. This works shows that both UV/Vis spectrophotometry and fluorimetry are useful instrumental techniques for the evaluation of pancreatic lipase catalytic activity, presenting several advantages and limitations, which make the choice of parameters and experimental conditions a crucial decision to obtain the most reliable results.