Bioavailability of Oil-Based and β-Lactoglobulin-Complexed Vitamin A in a Rat Model

Table 2

Serum and liver retinol and liver retinyl palmitate during vitamin A depletion (experiment 1)¹.

	3 weeks	4 weeks	6 weeks
Serum	Retinol	(μg/mL)
Regular diet	0.498 ± 0.092	0.724 ± 0.263	0.682 ± 0.114
Deficient diet	0.409 ± 0.071	0.382 ± 0.098	0.100 ± 0.023
Liver	Retinol	(μg/g)
Regular diet	3.56 ± 0.83^a	5.27 ± 1.05^a	19.89 ± 5.78^a
Deficient diet	1.17 ± 0.33^b	1.20 ± 0.62^b	0.12 ±  0.20^b∗
Liver	Retinyl palmitate	(𝜇g/g)
Regular diet	129.20 ± 17.36^A	137.28 ± 25.26^A	154.16 ± 45.31^A
Deficient diet	20.40 ± 6.06^B	9.37 ± 10.68^B	0.00 ±  00.00^B∗∗

 ¹Values are mean ± SD; 𝑛 = 3 rats/group. Means in a column for each compound with no common superscript letters are significantly different (𝑃 < 0.05).
*In one rat, vitamin A was not detectable by the HPLC analysis.
**No vitamin A was detectable by the HPLC analysis.