Vitamin E Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Vitamin E, including details on benefits, dosage, supplements, antioxidants.

Phospholipid transfer protein (PLTP) deficiency reduces brain vitamin E content and increases anxiety in mice.

Desrumaux C, Risold PY, Schroeder H, Deckert V, Masson D, Athias A, Laplanche H, Le Guern N, Blache D, Jiang XC, Tall AR, Desor D, Lagrost L

Laboratoire de Biochimie des Lipoprotéines, INSERM, Dijon, France.

Vitamin E supplementation constitutes a promising strategy in the prevention of neurodegenerative diseases. Here, we show that a phospholipid transfer protein (PLTP) is widely expressed in the brain where it appears to function as a transfer factor for alpha-tocopherol, the main isomer of vitamin E. PLTP deficiency results in significant depletion of brain alpha-tocopherol in both homozygous (-30.1%, P<0.0002) and heterozygous (-18.0%, P<0.05) PLTP knocked-out mice. Alpha-tocopherol depletion in PLTP-deficient homozygotes is associated with the elevation of lipofuscin (+25% and +450% increases in cortex and substantia nigra, respectively), cholesterol oxides (+54.5%, P<0.05), and cellular peroxides (+32.3%, P<0.01) in the brain. Complete PLTP deficiency in homozygotes is accompanied by increased anxiety as shown by fewer entries (8.3% vs. 44.4% in controls, P<0.01) and less time spent (1.7% vs. 41.3% in controls, P<0.05) in the open arms of an elevated plus-maze, in the absence of locomotor deterioration. Thus, the vitamin E transfer activity of PLTP appears to be a key process in preventing oxidative damage in the brain, and PLTP-deficient mice could be a new model of the contribution of oxidative brain injury in the etiology of neurodegenerative diseases.

Published 28 January 2005 in FASEB J, 19(2): 296-7.
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