Concerning research reveals that the infant brain is capable of absorbing and accumulating synthetic vitamin E. This petrochemical derivative may have significant downstream adverse effects on gene expression, immune function, and even neurodevelopment.
A provocative new study published in the British Journal of Nutrition titled, “The naturally occurring α-tocopherol stereoisomer RRR-α-tocopherol is predominant in the human infant brain,” has found that the infant brain preferentially absorbs and accumulates the natural form of vitamin E over the synthetic form, but it does so incompletely.
The researchers obtained their findings analyzing both the total α-tocopherol (RRR-α-tocopherol/natural) and α-tocopherol stereoisomers (8 different synthetic molecules) in the frontal cortex (FC), hippocampus (HPC) and visual cortex (VC) of infants (n 36) who died of sudden infant death syndrome or other conditions. They summarized their results as follows: