Maternal Supplementation of Vitamin E found to Benefit Offspring in Animal Study.

A Taiwanese study, published in the October Journal of Nutrition (135, 10:2457-2461, 2005), found that increased intake of vitamin E in mothers improved antioxidant status and suppressed oxidative stress in their offspring. Researchers fed female breeder chicks a standard corn-soybean diet without supplemental vitamin E for a 17-week developmental period. They then randomly assigned the birds to five corn-soybean diets supplemented with 0, 40, 80, 120, or 160 mg/kg of vitamin E (as alpha-tocopherol acetate). The eggs laid by these birds were incubated and upon hatching, 12 chicks from each diet variation were randomly sampled and sacrificed, and their livers and brains were evaluated for antioxidant status.

The offspring’s’ plasma vitamin E concentrations increased linearly with increased vitamin E in their mother’s diet. Concentrations of malondialdehyde (MDA), a marker of lipid peroxidation, in the chick brains decreased linearly with increased vitamin E supplementation in mothers. Similarly, levels of reactive oxygen species, an indicator of oxidative stress, in chick brains and livers, decreased with increased vitamin E supplementation in the mother. Chicks of pullets given 120 mg/kg and 160 mg/kg supplemental vitamin E had higher activity of the antioxidant enzymes catalase (in the liver), and superoxide dismutase (in the brain), than chicks of birds given 0-80 mg/kg and 0-40 mg/kg, respectively.

The researchers concluded their results indicated that maternal supplementation with high levels of vitamin E enhanced antioxidant capability and depressed oxidative stress in offspring.