ABSTRACT

Vitamin B6 is a water soluble vitamin essential for normal growth, development, and metabolism. Evidence demonstrates that vitamin B6 alters the steroid responsiveness of certain cell types by modulating the ability of steroid hormone receptors to activate target gene expression. The observations coupled with in vitro studies showing that pyridoxal phosphate affects various biophysical properties of steroid receptors serve as the basis for the idea that intracellular vitamin B6 is a physiological regulator of steroid hormone action. Consideration of a potential physiologic interplay between vitamin B6 and steroid receptors is actually a relatively new field of investigation which has its roots in classical biochemistry rather than traditional physiology or nutrition. In much of this early work, pyridoxal phosphate was used as a biochemical reagent rather than in physiologic quantities as a vitamin. The glucocorticoid receptor may be influenced not only by in vitro treatment with pyridoxal phosphate, but also by in vivo exposure.