Abstract
Dietary phospholipids and phytosterols have proven to be potential sources of bioactive lipids with widespread effects on pathways related to inflammation, cholesterol metabolism, and high-density lipoprotein function. Due to their biological and physicochemical properties, they are important in human nutrition. The efficient separation and accurate quantification of phospholipids and phytosterols can be achieved with high-performance liquid chromatography–evaporative light scattering detection (HPLC-ELSD) and gas chromatography (GC) often combined with mass spectrometry respectively. The phospholipid and phytosterol compositions of some Nigerian vegetable oils were reviewed. From the literature, the phospholipid concentrations (mg/100) of phosphatidyl choline, phosphatidyl ethanolamine, phosphatidyl serine, lysophosphatidyl choline, phosphatidyl inositol and phosphatidic acid are in the range of 2.60 – 1168.00, 1.13 – 558.00, 0.10 – 336.00, 0.72 – 596.00, 1.01 – 611.00 and 9.24 – 94.06, respectively. Total phospholipids range from 14.30 mg/100g in Ethiopian pepper to 2040.00 mg/100g in cooked groundnut. The values of cholesterol, choslestanol, ergosterol, campesterol, stigmesterol, 5 – avenasterol and sitosterol range between 1.6e-5 – 9.28, 4.80e-6 – 2.28, 4.59e-4 – 30.20, 9.39e-3 – 103.00, 1.24 – 45.60, 5.62e-3 – 53.50 and 17.21 – 351.00, respectively for the vegetable oils under review. Malaba spinach records the highest total phytosterols content (442.91 mg/100g), followed by big alligator pepper (369. 34 mg/100g) while Ethiopian pepper contains the least total phytosterols of 23.82 mg/100g. The results of this reviewed work indicate that Nigerian vegetable oils have potentials in finding application either in food industry as emulsifiers, emulsion stabilizers or industrial purposes such as biomedical applications, cosmetics and even drug delivery.
Highlights
In developing countries like Nigeria, sub-optimal diet is the major leading risk factor for disability and death
The analysis of phospholipids has been performed by several different methods, including thin-layer chromatography (TLC) [21, 22, 23], highperformance liquid chromatography (HPLC), [24, 25, 26, 27] and solid-phase extraction (SPE) [28, 29, 30]
The use of an evaporative light-scattering detector (ELSD) for lipid analysis has become essential, because it is a universal detector that is compatible with a broad range of solvents and gradient elution and the signal is independent of the degree of saturation and chain length of an acyl chain [31, 32, 33, 34]
Summary
In developing countries like Nigeria, sub-optimal diet is the major leading risk factor for disability and death. Phytosterols (plant sterols and stanols) are naturally occurring compounds found in all food of plants origin that include sitosterol and campesterol, and their saturated counterparts sitostanol and campestanol They resemble cholesterol both in structure and biological functions. The aim of this review work is to provide useful information on the potentiality of some Nigerian plant foods in providing phospholipids and phytosterols to serving as components of a healthy lifestyle, to reduce plasma low-density lipoproteincholesterol (LDL-C) levels, and thereby lower cardiovascular risk. Overview of the Phospholipids Composition of Nigerian Vegetable Oils Recent researches have shown that phospholipids can have a positive nutritional effect on human health, such as reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease [43, 44, 45], reducing blood cholesterol levels [46], and enhancing brain function [47]. The US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) had stated that consumption of PS may reduce the risk of dementia and cognitive dysfunction in elderly persons [62]
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