ABSTRACT
The commercialization of natural soy-and corn-derived tocopherols in the 1950s brought about an era of increasing popularity of alpha-tocopherol (alpha-T), making it synonymous to vitamin E. With an RDA escalating from 30 IU to more than 2,000 IU for daily supplemental use, alpha-T has far exceeded its original purpose as a vitamin for protection against fetal resorption (Evans and Bishop, 1922), for the red blood cell (Horwitt, 1960) or even as an antioxidant (Olcott and Emerson, 1937). The null effects of numerous alpha-T trials could have signaled the lack of alpha-T’s benets from large doses earlier. Disappointing as it may seem, alpha-T has most recently been proposed as a mere antioxidant and nothing more (Traber and Atkinson, 2007). Independently, recent publications on vitamin E continually expand the dossier of research marked by the benets of tocotrienols-and especially desmethyl tocotrienols-over alpha-T. In the 1980s, tocotrienols were shown to uniquely lower endogenous synthesis of cholesterol and caught the attention of the scientic public (Qureshi et al., 1986). Since alpha-T does not have the benets tocotrienol exhibits and has been shown to attenuate or interfere with the effects of tocotrienol (Qureshi et al., 1996), the usage and dosage of alpha-T should be reevaluated and more emphasis should be accorded to tocotrienols (Sen et al., 2007).
