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Updated: Jun 28, 2026

Quantitative Analysis of Dietary Vitamin A Metabolites in Murine Ocular and Non-Ocular Tissues Using High-Performance Liquid Chromatography
Published on: December 27, 2024
Dietary marine-derived tocopherol has a higher biological availability in mice relative to alpha-tocopherol
Naohiro Gotoh1, Hiroyuki Watanabe, Tomiko Oka
1Department of Food Science and Technology, Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology, 4-5-7 Konan, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-8477, Japan.
Abstract:
The biologic availability of two kinds of tocomonoenols, marine-derived tocopherol (MDT) and alpha-tocomonoenol, was investigated in ICR mice. Vitamin E-deficient ICR mice were fed MDT and alpha-tocomonoenol together with alpha-tocopherol, beta-tocopherol, gamma-tocopherol, and delta-tocopherol, and storage in liver, spleen, lung, and brain was quantified using reverse-phase high-performance liquid chromatography. The vitamin E relative biologic availability (VE-RBA) in liver was 100 for alpha-tocopherol, 26 +/- 3 for beta-tocopherol, 4 +/- 2 for gamma-tocopherol, not detected for delta-tocopherol, 49 +/- 6 for MDT, and 30 +/- 7 for alpha-tocomonoenol. The VE-RBA in brain was 100 for alpha-tocopherol, 5 +/- 2 for beta-tocopherol, not detected for gamma-tocopherol and delta-tocopherol, 8 +/- 1 for MDT, and 4 +/- 1 for alpha-tocomonoenol. Tocopherols and tocomonoenols did not accumulate in the spleen or lung. MDT and alpha-tocomonoenol had high VE-RBA values. The VE-RBA value for MDT was much higher than that for beta-tocopherol.
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