Liang Gengfan, Kow Audrey Siew Foong, Tham Chau Ling, Ho Yu-Cheng, Lee Ming Tatt
Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, UCSI University, Kuala Lumpur 56000, Malaysia.
Department of Biomedical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Serdang 43400, Malaysia.
Antioxidants (Basel). 2022 Nov 3;11(11):2179. doi: 10.3390/antiox11112179.
Osteoporosis, or bone loss, is a disease that affects many women globally. As life expectancy increases, the risk of osteoporosis in women also increases, too, and this will create a burden on the healthcare and economic sectors of a country. Osteoporosis was once thought to be a disease that would occur only after menopause. However, many studies have shown that osteoporosis may develop even in the perimenopausal stage. Due to the erratic levels of estrogen and progesterone during the perimenopausal stage, studies suggest that women are exposed to the risk of developing osteoporosis even at this stage. The erratic hormonal changes result in the production of proinflammatory mediators and cause oxidative stress, which leads to the progressive loss of bone-building activities. Tocotrienols, members of vitamin E, have many health-promoting properties. Due to their powerful anti-oxidative and anti-inflammatory properties, tocotrienols have shown positive anti-osteoporotic properties in post-menopausal studies. Hence, we propose here that tocotrienols could also possibly alleviate perimenopausal osteoporosis by discussing in this review the connection between inflammatory mediators produced during perimenopause and the risk of osteoporosis. Tocotrienols could potentially be an anti-osteoporotic agent, but due to their low bioavailability, they have not been as effective as they could be. Several approaches have been evaluated to overcome this issue, as presented in this review. As the anti-osteoporotic effects of tocotrienols were mostly studied in post-menopausal models, we hope that this review could pave the way for more research to be done to evaluate their effect on peri-menopausal models so as to reduce the risk of osteoporosis from an earlier stage.
骨质疏松症，即骨质流失，是一种影响全球众多女性的疾病。随着预期寿命的增加，女性患骨质疏松症的风险也在上升，这将给一个国家的医疗保健和经济部门带来负担。骨质疏松症曾被认为是一种仅在绝经后才会发生的疾病。然而，许多研究表明，即使在围绝经期阶段也可能会发展为骨质疏松症。由于围绝经期阶段雌激素和孕激素水平不稳定，研究表明女性即使在这个阶段也面临患骨质疏松症的风险。激素的不稳定变化会导致促炎介质的产生并引起氧化应激，从而导致骨生成活动逐渐丧失。生育三烯酚是维生素E的成员，具有许多促进健康的特性。由于其强大的抗氧化和抗炎特性，生育三烯酚在绝经后研究中已显示出积极的抗骨质疏松特性。因此，我们在此提出，通过在本综述中讨论围绝经期产生的炎症介质与骨质疏松症风险之间的联系，生育三烯酚也可能缓解围绝经期骨质疏松症。生育三烯酚可能是一种抗骨质疏松剂，但由于其生物利用度低，其效果尚未达到应有的程度。如本综述所述，已经评估了几种方法来克服这个问题。由于生育三烯酚的抗骨质疏松作用大多是在绝经后模型中进行研究的，我们希望本综述能够为更多研究铺平道路，以评估其对围绝经期模型的影响，从而从更早阶段降低骨质疏松症的风险。
