American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol 27, 952-959, Copyright © 1974 by The American Society for Clinical Nutrition, Inc.

Vitamin E-polyunsaturated lipid relationship in diet and tissues

¹ From the Texas Woman's University, Box 23975, TWU Station, Denton, Texas 76201

It is firmly established that the requirement for vitamin E is related to the fatty acid composition of the tissue lipids. Unfortunately, the complex relationships between dietary lipid composition and tissue lipid composition are not understood or appreciated by many investigators. Frequently one sees reports of drastic changes made in diet lipids and attempts to measure effects attributable to the change long before the establishment of new tissue equilibria. Data from animal studies are not directly applicable to adult man unless careful attention is paid to the extremely slow approach of certain tissues to equilibrium noted in the experiments of Dayton et al. and others. The kinetics of lipid autoxidation are relatively complex and it is not surprising that attempts to make predictions regarding events in biological systems have not always been successful. When the analogies are correctly stated excellent correlation is noted between lipid autoxidation in vitro and lipid peroxidation in vivo in various studies including those of Green and co-workers.