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: roles in prevention and therapy of human disease.

Tucker JM, Townsend DM

Department of Cell and Molecular Pharmacology, College of Pharmacy, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC 29425, USA. townsend@musc.edu

Alpha-tocopherol, one of the eight isoforms of vitamin E, is the most potent fat-soluble antioxidant known in nature. For years, it was thought that alpha-tocopherol only functioned as a scavenger of lipid peroxyl radicals, specifically, oxidized low-density lipoprotein (oxLDL), thereby serving as a chief antioxidant for the prevention of atherosclerosis. In recent years, the many roles of alpha-tocopherol have been uncovered, and include not only antioxidant functions, but also pro-oxidant, cell signaling and gene regulatory functions. Decades of clinical and preclinical studies have broadened our understanding of the antioxidant vitamin E and its utility in a number of chronic, oxidative stress-induced pathologies. The results of these studies have shown promising, albeit mixed reviews on the efficacy of alpha-tocopherol in the prevention and treatment of heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer's disease. Future studies to uncover cellular and systemic mechanisms may help guide appropriate clinical treatment strategies using vitamin E across a diverse population of aging individuals.

Published 5 September 2005 in Biomed Pharmacother, 59(7): 380-7.
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