Studies on vitamin E. 1. The determination of tocopherols in animal tissues

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Abstract
A method is given for the analysis of tocopherols in animal tissues. The tissues are first comminuted by grinding with solid CO2 and acetone at -70[degree], and the material is then extracted with acetone in a Soxhlet apparatus. The resulting extract is analyzed for tocopherols by a procedure that includes saponification, removal of sterols, chromatography on floridin earth and two-dimensional paper chromatography. Comparisons of results with those obtained on the same tissues by other methods have shown that paper chromatographic separation is essential for tocopherol determinations on such tissues, which contain very large amounts of non-tocopherol reducing substances, normally included in the Emmerie-Engel color determination. It is concluded that many literature figures for vitamin E contents of animals tissues must be seriously in error. The phosphomolybdic acid method has been found unsuitable for the analysis of tocopherols in unpurified extracts of animal tissue, and the dangers involved in its use, particularly for estimations of tocopherols in serum, have been stressed.