Possible Interaction: Carotenoids and Vitamin E

“Erythema on dorsal skin (back) was significantly diminished (P < 0.01) after week 8, and erythema suppression was greater with the combination of carotenoids and vitamin E than with carotenoids alone.”

“Consumption of the carotenoid supplement led to lower alpha-tocopherol responses (P = 0.02) compared with the basic diet only.”

“Over a period of 16 wk a daily alpha-tocopherol supplement of 800 IU approximately doubled plasma alpha-tocopherol levels (p less than 0.001), caused a small decrease in plasma carotenoids (p = 0.02), and produced a slight and statistically insignificant reduction in plasma retinol.”

“Mixtures of carotenoids or associations with others antioxidants (e.g. vitamin E ) can increase their activity against free radicals.”

“In conclusion, we provide partial evidence for synergism between vitamin E and carotenoids in relation to better baseline cognitive performance, pending further studies with time-dependent exposures and randomized trials directly examining this synergism.”

“Mixed-… between vitamin E …) carotenoids for three of 11 cognitive tests at v1, with only one meeting the statistical significance upon multiple testing correction whereby vitamin E … performance in the uppermost total carotenoid tertile (γ0a = +0.26 ± 0.08, p = 0.002), a synergism largely driven by carotenoid lycopene.”

“Consistent with this finding, the addition of alpha-tocopherol (25 microM) prevented the prooxidant effects of the carotenoid.”

“The addition of the antioxidant alpha-tocopherol blocked both the pro-oxidant and the growth-inhibitory effects of the carotenoid.”

“Strong positive correlations were found between total carotenoid and vitamin E plasma concentrations and the lag-time of Cu2+-mediated oxidation of LDL subfractions.”

“Significant, but modest, inverse associations (p < 0.05) were observed between intakes of pro-vitamin A carotenoids and dietary vitamin E and the incidence of large drusen and between zinc and the incidence of pigmentary abnormalities.”

“A significant correlation was found between serum tocopherol and carote-noids for both males and females.”