Biological Sources and Degradation
Lipoic acid is found in almost all foods, but slightly more so in kidney, heart, liver, spinach, broccoli, and yeast extract. Naturally occurring lipoic acid is always covalently bound and not readily available from dietary sources. Additionally, the amount of lipoic acid present is very low. For instance, the purification of lipoic acid to determine its structure used an estimated 10 tons of liver residue, which yielded 30 mg of lipoic acid. As a result, all lipoic acid available as a supplement is chemically synthesized.
Baseline levels (prior to supplementation) of RLA and R-DHLA have not been detected in human plasma. RLA has been detected at 12.3−43.1 ng/mL following acid hydrolysis, which releases protein-bound lipoic acid. Enzymatic hydrolysis of protein bound lipoic acid released 1.4−11.6 ng/mL and <1-38.2 ng/mL using subtilisin and alcalase, respectively. It has not been determined whether pre-supplementation levels of RLA derive from food sources, mitochondrial turnover and salvaging or from gut microbes but low levels have been correlated to a variety of disease states.
Digestive proteolytic enzymes cleave the R-lipoyllysine residue from the mitochondrial enzyme complexes derived from food but are unable to cleave the (R)-lipoic acid--lysine amide bond. Both synthetic lipoamide and (R)-lipoyl--lysine are rapidly cleaved by serum lipoamidases which release free (R)-lipoic acid and either -lysine or ammonia into the bloodstream. It has recently been questioned whether or not food sources of RLA provide any measurable benefit nutritionally or therapeutically due to the very low concentrations present. Lipoate is the conjugate base of lipoic acid and as such is the most prevalent form under physiologic conditions. Most endogenous RLA is not "free" because octanaote is attached to the enzyme complexes that use it via LipA. The sulfur atoms derive from the amino acid L-cysteine and add asymmetrically to octanoate by lipoate synthase, thus generating the chiral center at C6. Endogenous RLA has been found outside the mitochondria associated with the nucleus, peroxisomes and other organelles. It has been suggested that the reduced form, R-DHLA may be the substrate for membrane-associated prostaglandin E-2 synthase (mPGES2).
Read more about this topic: Lipoic Acid
Famous quotes containing the words biological, sources and/or degradation:
“It is not the literal past that rules us, save, possibly, in a biological sense. It is images of the past.... Each new historical era mirrors itself in the picture and active mythology of its past or of a past borrowed from other cultures. It tests its sense of identity, of regress or new achievement against that past.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)
“Even healthy families need outside sources of moral guidance to keep those tensions from imploding—and this means, among other things, a public philosophy of gender equality and concern for child welfare. When instead the larger culture aggrandizes wife beaters, degrades women or nods approvingly at child slappers, the family gets a little more dangerous for everyone, and so, inevitably, does the larger world.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (20th century)
“It was the most ungrateful and unjust act ever perpetrated by a republic upon a class of citizens who had worked and sacrificed and suffered as did the women of this nation in the struggle of the Civil War only to be rewarded at its close by such unspeakable degradation as to be reduced to the plane of subjects to enfranchised slaves.”
—Anna Howard Shaw (1847–1919)