ABSTRACT
Early work suggested several potential sites for discrimination, including the level of mucosal sterol esterification (106) and luminal solubilization (107,108). Two major sites appeared to be involved, namely, differential uptake at the brush border and differential affinity for bile salt in micelles. The possibility that absorbable and unabsorbable sterols possess different affinities for the micelle as suggested by Armstrong and Carey (108) could result in a differential delivery of the sterols to the cell surface. Ikeda and Sugano (109) reported that the intestinal uptake of sitosterol intubated into the stomach of rats was about one-fifth that of cholesterol.
