Current Pharmaceutical Design - Volume 17, Issue 21, 2011

Tocotrienols are a form of vitamin E that have been under the shadow of the popular vitamin E form, α-tocopherol. There are eight forms of vitamin E: four tocopherols (alpha, beta, gamma, delta) and four tocotrienols (alpha, beta, gamma, delta). Tocorienol and tocopherol are similar in that both have the same head called chromanol nucleus, the site of antioxidant activities. Alpha-tocopherol (α-tocopherol) is the most c Read More

This review emphasizes the effects of tocotrienols on the risk factors for atherosclerosis, plaque instability and thrombogenesis, and compares these effects with tocopherol. Tocotrienols reduce serum lipids and raise serum HDL-C. Alpha-tocopherol, on the other hand, has no effect on serum lipids. Tocotrienols have greater antioxidant activity than tocopherols. Both reduce the serum levels of Creactive protein (CRP) an Read More

The scope of this review is to summarize the important roles of vitamin E family members as protective agents in cardiovascular pathologies of different types of disease states and particularly in diabetes, including some of our research results, to illustrate how this recent knowledge is helping to better understand the roles of the vitamin E family in biology, in animals and humans specifically. Cardiovascular disease, a g Read More

The worldwide cardiovascular disease (CVD) burden has resulted in an intense interest in pharmaceutical approaches to combat this multifactorial disease. Vitamins are high-flying among natural or endogenous compounds, considered to be beneficial to human health and have become attractive targets for research. Of all the vitamins, tocopherols and tocotrienols, parent congeners in the vitamin E family, are found to Read More

Tocotrienols are members of vitamin E family and possess broad biological activities including antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and antitumor effects. In the present study, we examine the potential of α-tocotrienol (AT) and γ-tocotrienol (GT) in inhibiting the proliferation of human T cell lymphoma Jurkat cells and elucidate the pathways involved in anti tumor effects of GT. GT but not AT inhibited proliferation and induced apoptosis in Read More

It is well known that vitamin E functions as an antioxidant, and it is expected to exert an antioxidant effect when taken as a supplement. However, a number of cohort studies have shown that vitamin E does not alleviate oxidative stress and could even worsen it. Recently, Wang et al. investigated whether vitamin E intake was associated with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) based on data from 5 cohort studies with 1,055,546 pa Read More

Vitamin E family constitutes of tocopherol and tocotrienol. Each form has several isomers: alpha,beta, gamma, delta, desmo and didesmo. Although tocopherol is known much earlier, tocotrienol has been discovered more recently.Tocotrienol has higher antioxidant potential than tocopherol. Research shows that tocotrienol can inhibit the induced oxidative damage to lipids and proteins. Cholesterol biosynthesis pat Read More

Metabolic syndrome is defined as a set of health risk factors that are associated with an increased chance of cardiovascular diseases and type 2 diabetes. These include abdominal obesity, hyperglycemia, impaired glucose tolerance, dyslipidemia, and hypertension. Interventions in metabolic syndrome include lifestyle interventions such as a healthy diet using functional foods together with increased physical activity to induce Read More

Tocotrienols, components belonging to vitamin E members, are used as potent therapeutics in the treatment of several diseases. Recent studies suggested tocotrienol to have better activity in many situations compared to tocopherols. Tocotrienols have been shown to lower the atherogenic apolipoprotein B and lipoprotein plasma levels. Additionally, tocotrienols with their anti-tumor effect together with anti-angiogenic and a Read More

Human pancreatic cancer remains a highly malignant disease with almost similar incidence and mortality despite extensive research. Many targeted therapies are under development. However, clinical investigation showed that single targeted therapies and most combined therapies were not able to improve the prognosis of this disease, even though some of these therapies had excellent anti-tumor effects in pre-clini Read More