Vitamin E nomenclature.

Abstract

The 3rd Vitamin E Satellite Symposium (VESS3) "100 years of vitamin E", held in Ghent, Belgium, August 2022 during the joint meeting of the Society for Free Radical Research (SFRR)-Europe branch and the Plant Oxygen Group (POG) was an occasion to reunite the scientific community interested in vitamin E and debate on its fundamentals in human nutrition one century after its discovery. This conference initiated a discussion forum dedicated to the revision of the nomenclature of vitamin E that was hosted in this journal (https://www.sciencedirect.com/special-issue/10GWS76VWXX). The forum collected 8 papers, including the opening article "Vitamin E discussion forum - position paper on the revision of the nomenclature of vitamin E"(Azzi, Atkinson et al. 2023), that addressed the nomenclature issue essentially suggesting "to restrict to RRR-α-tocopherol the attribute of vitamin E" and to identify "… other related molecules, including chroman-6-ols (i.e. non-α-tocopherols and tocotrienols) and chromen-6-ols by their chemical names until a disease is identified that is prevented by the specific compounds.". The articles published in this forum issue are summarized and their final considerations critically evaluated. The consensus to have come out of these articles favors the original revision proposal, with the modification of including all 2R stereoisomers of α-tocopherol (α-TOH), in addition to RRR-α-TOH, in the definition of vitamin E. Further and more rigorous studies on the molecular and clinical aspects of vitamin E essentiality were also advised together with studies on the essentiality of other vitamin E-related like compounds.