My mom still calls me and makes sure I’m taking my vitamins every day and I believe that Vitamins can fix everything…
Vitamin E (α-tocopherol) functions as a ‘chain breaker’ during lipid peroxidation in cell membranes. This is an efficient lipid soluble antioxidant that exhibits antioxidant effects by scavenging lipid peroxyl radicals in vivo as well as in vitro systems. However, vitamin E is not an efficient scavenger of ˙OH and alkoxyl radicals (˙OR) in vivo.
Vitamin C (ascorbic acid), a water-soluble free radical scavenger, gets converted to the ascorbate radical by donating an electron to the lipid radical in order to cease the lipid peroxidation chain reaction.
It is quite evident from the above mechanism that the pairs of ascorbate radicals react rapidly to produce one molecule of ascorbate along with another molecule of dehydroascorbate. Since dehydroascorbate does not show any antioxidant capacity so dehydroascorbate gets converted back into the ascorbate by the addition of two electrons.
Monaghan and Schmitt were the persons who first described antioxidant potential of vitamin A and its protecting behaviour of lipids against rancidity. Study has been performed on vitamin A in relation to protect human LDL against copper-stimulated oxidation.
Oxidation of the polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) generates a fatty acid radical (L˙) (where, LH is the target PUFA) which rapidly adds oxygen to form a fatty acid peroxyl radical (LOO˙). The peroxyl radicals are the carriers of the chain reactions and they can further oxidize PUFA molecules to initiate new chain reactions, producing lipid hydroperoxides (LOOH). In the above mechanism, Vitamin A’s radical scavenging mechanism has been briefly explained.
