Conjugated linoleic acid influences the metabolism of tocopherol in lactating rats but has little effect on tissue tocopherol concentrations in pups

Table 1 Ingredients and concentrations of individual tocopherols in the experimental diets

	Control diet	CLA diet
Ingredient, g/kg diet
Corn starch	532	532
Casein	200	200
Sucrose	100	100
Cellulose	50	50
Soybean oil	55	55
Sunflower oil	15	-
CLA supplement (Lutalin®)	-	15
Mineral mix^a	35	35
Vitamin mix^a	10	10
L-Cysteine	3	3
Dietary tocopherol concentration (μmol/kg diet)^b
α-tocopherol	140 ± 3.28	141 ± 2.02
γ-tocopherol	60.4 ± 1.30	59.8 ± 1.43
δ-tocopherol	6.57 ± 0.37	6.58 ± 0.22
Tocopherol equivalents^c	147 ± 3.28	147 ± 2.01

^aThe mineral and vitamin mix were composed as recommended for the AIN 93G diet by Reeves et al. [11]
^bmeans ± standard deviations of 5 analyses of feed samples collected in weeks 1 to 5. The β- and δ-tocopherols, which are quantitatively negligible as source of active vitamin E in soybean and sunflower oil [32], could not be separated by HPLC and are summarized as δ-tocopherol
^csum of active α, δ- and γ-tocopherol considering conversion factors of 0.10 for γ-tocopherol and 0.03 for δ-tocopherol as compared to α-tocopherol (100 % active) [17]

ISSN: 1476-511X