ABSTRACT
As late as 2002, major reviews on vitamin E made surprisingly little to no mention of the presence of tocotrienols (Brigelius-Flohe et al., 2002), despite the discovery of these classes of compounds by Pennock and Whittle (Pennock et al., 1964; Whittle et al., 1966) in 1964, and their biological signi•cance delineated in the early 1980s and thereafter (Schauss, 2009). Lack of interest is partially due to the very low levels found in most plants and food sources. So it is not surprising that evidence supporting the safety of tocotrienols is somewhat sparse, as normal food sources are limited. However, with the dramatic increase in the sales of dietary supplements containing tocotrienols higher in concentration than would be found in the daily diet, the need to evaluate the safety of these compounds is imperative.
