Effect of antioxidant-enriched foods on plasma: Phospholipid molecular species composition

The dietary supplementation with antioxidant-enriched foods was evaluated for the phospholipid (PL) class and molecular species composition of human plasma. Twenty healthy subjects were supplied with α-tocopherol (13.7 mg/day) and coenzyme Q10 (19.4 mg/day) by enriched milk, a dessert, fruit juice and yogurt for 21 days. Phosphatidylcholine (85.2%) and sphingomyelin (10.9%) were the main PL in all samples. Differences among the contents of PL classes were not found. However, principal component analysis showed differences in the PL molecular species 2 h after the mid-morning snack. An increase of phosphatidylinositol (PI) containing stearic/arachidonic (on average from 42.5 to 47.0%), stearic/docosahexaenoic (3.2 vs. 4.9%), oleic/arachidonic and palmitic/docosapentaenoic acid (2.4 vs. 3.7%) was observed. The decreasing species of PI were palmitic/linoleic (5.7 vs. 4.3%), palmitic/oleic (8.1 vs. 6.9%) and stearic/linoleic acid (17.4 vs. 13.8%) after the mid-morning snack. Phosphatidylethanolamine (PE) species showed an opposite trend with respect to PI: A decrease was registered for stearic/arachidonic (17.0 vs. 15.8%), stearic/docosahexaenoic (7.2 vs. 4.9%), oleic/arachidonic and palmitic/docosapentaenoic acid (5.8 vs. 4.8%); an increase was observed for the PE species containing oleic/linoleic (5.5 vs. 7.5% on average after the mid-morning snack), stearic/linoleic (19.7 vs. 23.4%) and stearic/oleic acid (11.4 vs. 13.9%). © 2009 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.