Meso-zeaxanthin.doc

Meso-zeaxanthin: a cutting-edge carotenoid By Richard Bone Print Comment Email Current evidence demonstrates that the carotenoids lutein, zeaxanthin and meso-zeaxanthin are readily bioavailable and if supplemented will effectively increase macular pigment levels. The distinction between each remains a focus of research in many labs. John T Landrum, PhD, and Richard A Bone, PhD, investigate Nowhere in the human body is the nutritional significance of carot-enoids more evident than in the retina.1,2,3 Here, at the centre of the retina (the ?fovea?), dietary xanthophylls are accumulated, constituting the macular pigments or macula lutea.4,5 These yellow compounds are concentrated to the greatest extent within the inner retinal layers so that blue light, focused upon the fovea by the lens and cornea, is filtered and attenuated before reaching the critically functional photoreceptor and retinal pigment epithelium layers in the outer retina.6 The concentration of these yellow carotenoids found in the macular region of the retina in the eye is about 10,000 times greater than that found in blood, attesting to a mechanism of active accumulation by this tissue.7 The carotenoids of the macular pigment are classified as xanthophylls and are structurally related to alpha- and beta-carotene; they differ from these carotenes only by the presence of hydroxyl groups. It is startling that the retina accumulates only the xanthophylls lutein and zeaxanthin, two of about a dozen abundant carotenoids found in the blood, while not even traces of the other carotenoids are found in this tissue. Other tissues of the body, such as the liver, skin and fat, also have detectable levels of all serum carotenoids, but appear to have little or no specificity.8,9 One exception to this is the human lens. Here, like the retina, only lutein and zeaxanthin are present, though apparently at much lower concentrations than in the retina.10,11,12 Lutein and zeaxanthin each exist in a number of dif