Edison, New Jersey, July 17th 2006 – Carotech announced the publication of two NIH-funded studies conducted at the Ohio State University Medical Center that demonstrated that taking tocotrienols (Tocomin® and Tocomin® SupraBioTM) orally is an effective way to elevate blood plasma levels to concentrations that could help protect against neurological damage resulting from stroke

These two studies published in the May, 2006 issue of the journal Antioxidant & Redox Signaling and June 26th issue of the Journal of Neurochemistry, came in the heel of the recent publication in the journal STROKE (Oct 2005) that showed Tocomin® natural full spectrum palm tocotrienol complex significantly protects against stroke-induced neurodegeneration compared with matched controls.

Vitamin E occurs naturally in eight different forms – 4 forms of tocopherol and 4 forms of tocotrienol. While tocopherols are generally present in common vegetable oils (i.e. soy, canola, wheat germ, sunflower), tocotrienols, on the other hand, are concentrated in cereal grains (i.e. oat, barley, and rye, rice bran), with the richest source found in virgin crude palm oil, a vegetable oil that is increasingly used in prepared foods due to its trans-fat free property.

Vitamin E products currently available on the shelves of health food stores consist mainly of tocopherol (alpha-tocopherol or mixed tocopherols). Of late, tocotrienol has been gaining wide attention and surfacing as a potent neuroprotective form of vitamin E in the current and a number of other NIH-funded studies, conducted by Prof. Chandan Sen, Deputy Director (Davis Heart & Lung Research Institute) and Vice Chairman (Research) of Surgery, at the Ohio State University Medical Center.
It has been hypothesized that orally consumed tocotrienols may not be delivered to the organs due to inefficient transport of this vitamin E by tocopherol transfer protein, which has a greater affinity for tocopherols.
In the first study, Prof. Sen, in collaboration with Prof Pramod Khosla, Wayne State University, gave a group of women 400mg of Tocovid SupraBio soft gel capsules and collected blood samples after 2, 4, 6 and 8 hours after supplementation. Peak plasma tocotrienol levels were found to be 12 to 30 times higher than those needed to completely prevent stroke-related neurodegeneration as determined by earlier research.
“Our results demonstrate that tocotrienol is efficiently delivered to the bloodstream despite the fact that the transfer protein has a lower affinity for tocotrienol than it has for tocopherol,” said Prof. Sen
In the second study, published in the Journal of Neurochemistry, Prof. Sen’s team determined that tocotrienols protect against stroke-induced neurodegeneration by acting as an antioxidant at higher concentrations, and non-antioxidant protection at lower levels.

Neurological damage that can be caused in two different ways - through the presence of homocysteic acid, which in excess can cause vascular and neuronal lesions associated with cardiovascular disease, and the fatty acid linoleic acid, which can directly stimulate damaging free radical activity. Fatty acids are related to stroke as they rapidly accumulate when a clot in a vessel stops blood flow to the brain, and cause irreversible brain injury.

To observe tocotrienol’s effectiveness, Prof. Sen and his colleagues treated rodent neural cells with extremely low concentrations of tocotrienol (nanomolar level) and these cells avoided the cell death associated with toxicity caused by homocysteic acid. But to reduce free-radical activity and resulting neurotoxicity caused by fatty acid linoleic acid, the scientists found that a higher concentration of tocotrienol was needed. Tocotrienol does not exhibit antioxidant properties until it reaches a concentration 10 to 25 times stronger than the concentration that prevented the cell death signal.

“We have determined that when administered orally, tocotrienol can reach concentrations needed to serve these dual protective functions,” said Sen. In previous published studies, Sen showed that the tocotrienol crosses the blood-brain. Oral supplementation with Tocomin® in spontaneously-hypertensive rats lead to increased brain levels of tocotrienols. At subattomole quantity, tocotrienol protected neurons from glutamate-challenge, consistent with previous reports that at low doses, the neuroprotective property of tocotrienol is not shared by tocopherol. Tocomin® may protect against stroke by modulating two key molecular check-points - the c-Src and 12-lipoxygenase activity to favour survival of the neurons.

“As the largest and leading producer of full spectrum tocotrienol complex, Carotech is committed to bringing science to support our customers. Again, we are proud to be associated with OSU Medical Center in these NIH-funded studies. The only way to get tocotrienols into the brain is through supplementation over a period of time to have significant and measurable level of tocotrienols in the brain for optimum protection ,” said WH Leong, Vice President for Carotech Inc.

Carotech Inc, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Carotech Bhd, Malaysia. Carotech, a public listed company in Malaysia (Malaysian Securities Exchange Board under the high-technology / high growth, MESDAQ Board), is the largest producer of tocotrienol in the world via its patented technology. Carotech Bhd is a subsidiary of Hovid Bhd., one of the largest GMP-certified pharmaceutical companies in Malaysia.
For more information about Tocomin® and Tocomin® SupraBioTM, visit www.carotech.net or www.tocotrienol.org. Email : [email protected]. Tocomin® and Tocomin® SupraBioTM are registered trademarks of Carotech Inc and protected by US Patent Nos : 5,157,132 and 6,596,306.