VITAMIN-E IN MACULAR AND PERIPHERAL-TISSUES OF THE HUMAN EYE

This study was undertaken to investigate the distribution of vitamin E in the macular and peripheral regions of the human retina, retinal pi gment epithelium (RPE) and choroid as a function of age. High-performa nce liquid chromatography (HPLC) was used to measure alpha- and gamma- tocopherol levels quantitatively using tocol as an internal standard. In 57 out of 70 donor eyes (ages 9-104) the macular region was isolate d and the tocopherols analyzed. The conventional brush method and a ne w Vortex method were used to isolate the retinal pigment epithelium ce lls. Similar trends for the vitamin E levels (increase to the 5th deca de, decrease after 7th decade) were found for the macular and peripher al retina and for the macular RPE. In the peripheral RPE a slight cont inuous increase with age was found. The vitamin E levels are higher in the RPE than in the retina, for both macular and peripheral regions. The amounts of vitamin E/mg protein are lower in the macular retina th an in the peripheral retina, whereas in the RPE there is no difference in vitamin E content between macular and peripheral regions. A simple method based on a gentle vortex step was found to offer several advan tages over the more generally used isolation of RPE cells based on bru shing, and there was no difference in recovery of vitamin E in RPE cel ls when they were isolated by either isolation technique. It was also found that denominators, used to express the values of vitamin E in ti ssues should, be used with care since age dependent trends in paramete rs/denominators could be caused by trends in the denominators only.