Abstract
Vitamin D, like other functional lipid bioactive compounds, t suffers from less structural stability, poor water solubility and consequently less bioavailability and cellular uptake. Preparation of vitamin D microemulsions is one of the solutions for the above problems. Thus, in the present study, vitamin D microemulsions were prepared using various one/two-component stabilizer systems, namely, Tween 20 and sodium caseinate in various proportions. The effects of stabilizer components proportions on characteristics of gained vitamin D microemulsions were evaluated using a two-component mixture design of experiment. Therefore, various polynomial models were proposed in order to predict the characteristics of produced microemulsions. According to the optimization analysis, the vitamin D microemulsions stabilized by a stabilizer system composed of 70% Tween 20 and 30% sodium caseinate could produce the most desirable microemulsions with minimum mean particle size, polydispersity, and maximum zeta potential, transparency and vitamin D content. The produced vitamin D microemulsions showed acceptable chemical and good physical stabilities, which can be incorporated easily in water-based food and pharmaceutical formulations.