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From The December 2001 Issue of Nutrition Science News
How Vitamin E Works
Jack Challem
Researchers have found that vitamin E supplements can improve rheumatoid arthritis symptoms and reduce markers of inflammation.1 In a recent study with laboratory mice, Simin Nikbin Meydani, D.V.M., Ph.D., of Tufts University in Boston, found that peroxynitrite, a free radical built around an oxygen and nitrogen molecule, in-creased activity of cyclooxygenase-2 (cox-2), an enzyme involved in making inflammatory prostaglandins. Giving the mice extra vitamin E reduced cox-2 and proinflammatory prostaglandin E2 levels.
Jack Challem, known as the The Nutrition Reporter™, has been writing about vitamin research for 25 years and is the author of Syndrome X: The Complete Nutritional Program to Prevent and Reverse Insulin Resistance (Wiley, 2000).
References
1. Wu D, et al. Vitamin E and macrophage cyclooxygenase regulation in the aged. J Nutr 2001;131:382S-8S.
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