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Updated: Jul 16, 2026

Evaluation of the Storage Stability of Extracellular Vesicles
Published on: May 22, 2019
How long can you store vitamins? Stability of tocopherols and tocotrienol during different storage conditions in
Irmela Sarvan1, Anton Jürgensen1, Matthias Greiner1
1German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR), Max-Dohrn-Straße 8-10, 10589 Berlin, Germany.
Abstract:
Differences between the stability of α-, β-, γ-, and δ-tocopherol as well α-tocotrienol stored at -20 °C and -80 °C were studied in broccoli and blueberry samples. Before storage up to 28 days, they underwent different initializing processes such as freezing quickly with liquid nitrogen and freeze-drying, followed by homogenization. While α-tocopherol levels in blueberries did not significantly differ, levels in broccoli were substantially higher after homogenization of freeze-dried samples compared to fresh broccoli samples. This might be caused by higher extractability of α-tocopherol from the changed cell structure. Storage of fresh broccoli samples at -20 °C led to decreasing α-tocopherol levels. Nevertheless, the deviation between freeze-dried samples to the initial fresh samples and fresh samples frozen with liquid nitrogen stored at -20 °C for 7 days were in the same order of magnitude. In conclusion, storage up to 7 days for vitamin relevant samples before analysis seemed to be justifiable.
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