Abstract
Numerous specific age-related morbidities have been correlated with low intake and serum levels of tocopherols and tocotrienols. We performed a review in order to evaluate the extant evidence regarding: (1) the association between intake and serum levels of tocopherols and tocotrienols and age-related pathologies (osteoporosis, sarcopenia and cognitive impairment); and (2) the optimum diet therapy or supplementation with tocopherols and tocotrienols for the treatment of these abnormalities. This review included 51 eligible studies. The recent literature underlines that, given the detrimental effect of low intake and serum levels of tocopherols and tocotrienols on bone, muscle mass, and cognitive function, a change in the lifestyle must be the cornerstone in the prevention of these specific age-related pathologies related to vitamin E-deficient status. The optimum diet therapy in the elderly for avoiding vitamin E deficiency and its negative correlates, such as high inflammation and oxidation, must aim at achieving specific nutritional goals. These goals must be reached through: accession of the elderly subjects to specific personalized dietary programs aimed at achieving and/or maintaining body weight (avoid malnutrition); increase their intake of food rich in vitamin E, such as derivatives of oily seeds (in particular wheat germ oil), olive oil, hazelnuts, walnuts, almonds, and cereals rich in vitamin E (such as specific rice cultivar rich in tocotrienols) or take vitamin E supplements. In this case, vitamin E can be correctly used in a personalized way either for the outcome from the pathology or to achieve healthy aging and longevity without any adverse effects.
Highlights
Suboptimal micronutrient intake for particular vitamins and between these, vitamin E is common in older adults [1] due to both acute conditions and chronic diseases very frequent in the elderly population.Various factors contribute to this nutritional deficiency in aging with subsequent chronic inflammation, immune response impaired, and increased antioxidant activity
The present systematic review was performed following the steps by Egger et al as follows [25]: (1) configuration of a working group: three operators skilled in clinical nutrition, of whom one acting as a methodological operator and two participating as clinical operators; (2) formulation of the revision question on the basis of considerations made in the abstract: “the state of the art on metabolic and nutritional correlates of vitamin E deficiency in elderly and their nutritional treatment”; (3) identification of relevant studies: A research strategy was planned, on PubMed (Public MedIine run by the National Center of Biotechnology Information (NCBI) of the National Library of Medicine of Bathesda (USA)), as follows: (a) definition of the key words
E, tocopherols, tocotrienols, osteoporosis, bone mass, sarcopenia, muscle mass, Alzheimer’s disease, and mild cognitive impairment), allowing the definition of the interest field of the documents to be searched, grouped in inverted commas (“...”) and used separately or in combination; (b) use of: the boolean AND operator, that allows the establishments of logical relations among concepts; (c) research modalities: advanced search; (d) limits: time limits: papers published in the last 20 years; humans; languages: English; and (e) manual search performed by the senior researchers experienced in clinical nutrition through the revision of reviews and individual articles on vitamin E and specific age-related pathologies
Summary
Suboptimal micronutrient intake for particular vitamins and between these, vitamin E is common in older adults [1] due to both acute conditions and chronic diseases very frequent in the elderly population.Various factors contribute to this nutritional deficiency in aging with subsequent chronic inflammation, immune response impaired, and increased antioxidant activity. With only 8%–11% of men and 2%–8% of women meeting the estimated average requirement (EAR) for vitamin E from foods alone in the 1994–1996 Continuing Survey of. The same results have been shown in a representative sample of Puerto Rican and Dominican free living elders and neighborhood-matched non-Hispanic white elders living in Massachusetts: most (94% and 95%, respectively) did not meet the EAR for vitamin E from food alone and fewer than 10% of subjects in both groups had plasma α-tocopherol concentrations
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