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.

Alpha-tocopherol affects androgen metabolism in male rat.

Barella L, Rota C, Stöcklin E, Rimbach G

DSM Nutritional Products, Research and Development, Human Nutrition and Health, CH-4303 Kaiseraugst, Switzerland. luca.barella@dsm.com

The Alpha-Tocopherol Beta-Carotene Cancer Prevention Study has provided the first evidence implicating vitamin E in hormone synthesis. The effect of vitamin E on stereoidogenesis in testes and adrenal glands was assessed in growing rats using Affymetrix gene-chip technology. Dietary supplementation of rats with vitamin E (60 mg/kg feed) for a period of 429 days caused a significant repression of genes encoding for proteins centrally involved in the uptake (low-density lipoprotein receptor) and de novo synthesis (for example, 7-dehydrocholesterol reductase, 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl coenzyme A synthase, 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl-coenzyme A reductase, isopentenyl-diphosphate delta-isomerase, and farnesyl pyrophosphate synthetase) of cholesterol, the precursor of all steroid hormones. The present investigation indicates that dietary vitamin E may induce changes in stereoidogenesis by affecting cholesterol homeostasis.

Published 8 March 2005 in Ann N Y Acad Sci, 1031: 334-6.
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