Vitamins A and E differ in hydrophobicity. When added to a fat load more or less specific labeling of
chylomicrons and their remnants can be expected and this allows to approach the mechanism of postprandial
lipemia from a new sight of view. Applied in a study in which 20 patients participated (eight patients with
familial dysbetalipoproteinemia (FD), six patients with
familial combined hyperlipidemia (FCH) and six controls) we found that
vitamin A, no longer paralleled the
apo B-48 concentrations from 9 h after a fat load, especially in the remnant fraction with Sf 15-100. Qualitatively, the distribution of
vitamin A to the more dense fractions mirrored that of
vitamin E, but the latter was more rapid. Both
vitamins at the maximum of remnant-accumulation, at 14 h after the fat load, correlated with the
cholesterol content of the remnant fraction. For
vitamin E there was a similar concentration dependent distribution to all other
lipoprotein fractions. The results confirm our view that the
lipoprotein mechanism can be regarded as a dynamic system. During regular episodes following the meals, exogenous fat is, like the
vitamins, distributed over all endogenously formed
lipoproteins. This transfer process results in the formation of
beta-VLDL and contributes to the pathogenesis of FCH and FD.