The study suggests that fortifying foods with the vitamin could help healthy consumers fight disease.
The researchers from Unilever's Health Institute in the Netherlands noted that while high doses of vitamin E have been shown to decrease lipid peroxidation in persons under oxidative stress, there is little data to predict whether lower doses offer the same benefit in healthy people.
They randomly assigned 105 healthy adults subjects to consume 25g daily of spread containing 43 mg alpha-tocopherol equivalents and 0.45 mg carotenoids, or 111 mg alpha-tocopherols and 1.24 mg carotenoids or in the third group, 1.3 mg RRR--tocopherol without carotenoids.
After the parallel, 11-week intervention study, subjects consuming the first spread saw blood alpha-tocopherol concentrations increase 31 per cent with small but significant increases in concentrations of beta-carotene and lutein.
This resulted in LDL with significantly higher total antioxidant capacity (17 per cent) and an increased resistance to oxidation.
Further, these improvements were dose dependent, write the researchers. Larger increases in these variables were observed in subjects consuming the second spread, which also significantly reduced concentrations of the plasma lipid peroxidation biomarker F2-isoprostane (by 15 per cent).
The study is published in this month's American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, vol 78, no 5, pp985-992.