Vitamin E: Recommended Intake

Data of vitamin E intake and status are controversial. Vitamin E is an essential micronutrient for humans and achieving an optimal status is assumed to produce beneficial health outcomes. Dietary intake recommendations for vitamin E vary considerably by different countries and organizations. It appears to be still a challenge to define these despite the wealth of data published. Vitamin E requirements have been proposed to depend on other nutritional factors, such as the intake of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA). Although several foods contain naturally occurring sources of vitamin E, it is frequently the case that the intake recommendations are not achieved. Several other dietary factors affect the need for vitamin E. In this regard, significant challenges to be considered include the efficiency of other tocopherol variants and their properties that could affect the revision of the nutritional recommendations for vitamin E. Particularly, an ever-increasing evidence indicates that other vitamin E homologs may potentially present with a higher biological activity. Low dietary consumption of vitamin E, coupled with compelling evidence that increased intake of vitamin E above current recommendations for the general population may benefit older individuals.

Development of oil-in-water microemulsion encapsulating Vitamin E for thermal and hydrolysis degradation study

Vitamin E is widely used for medicinal and cosmeceuticals purposes. However, it is easy to degrade by the environment. In this study, the degradation of Gold Tri.E™ was studied and determined. Gold Tri.E™ is a mixture of Vitamin E homologs (tocotrienol and tocopherol) extracted from palm oil (Elais Guineensis). A nanocarrier system has been optimized to encapsulate Gold Tri.E™ from degrading and increasing its stability as a bioactive compound. An oil-in-water (o/w) microemulsion was formulated and optimized as the best carrier to encapsulate Gold Tri.E™ with the mean particle size of 32.60±3.60 nm and 99.99±0.01% encapsulation efficiency (EE). Degradation of the Gold Tri.E™ in o/w microemulsion was significantly reduced as compared to the bare Gold Tri.ETM. This suggested that the system could protect Gold Tri.E™ from thermal and hydrolysis degradation. Thus, the ease of preparation, low-cost production, and small particle size obtained when Gold Tri.E™ encapsulated in this system give promising drug delivery system to encapsulate, protect, and increase the shelf life of Gold Tri.E™.