Anti-inflammatory properties of α- and γ-tocopherol

Natural vitamin E consists of four different tocopherol and four different tocotrienol homologues (alpha, beta, gamma, delta) that all have antioxidant activity. However,. recent data indicate that the different vitamin E homologues also have biological activity unrelated to their antioxidant activity. In this review, we discuss the anti-inflammatory properties of the two major forms of vitamin E, alpha-tocopherol (alpha T) and gamma-tocopherol (gamma T), and discuss the potential molecular mechanisms involved in these effects. While both tocopherols exhibit anti-inflammatory activity in vitro and in vivo, supplementation with mixed (gamma T-enriched) tocopherols seems to be more potent than supplementation with alpha T alone. This may explain the mostly negative out-comes of the recent large-scale interventional chronic disease prevention trials with alpha T only and thus warrants further investigation. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.