Importance of Vitamin E and Its Metabolism for Health and Disease

Vitamin E was discovered as ‘factor X’, which has an essential function in rodent fertility. Later, it was attributed an important role as an antioxidant, and until today, vitamin E is still considered one of the most important antioxidants in human nutrition. Over the last 100 years of vitamin E research, it has been shown that this fat-soluble vitamin has a variety of important functions in the metabolism of animals and humans. Several in vitro and in vivo studies on vitamin E, or its derivatives and metabolites, demonstrate its essentiality for membrane integrity, anti-oxidative and anti-inflammatory properties as well as neuroprotection. Thus, vitamin E plays an important role in various diseases. In this article we provide an overview of the function and metabolism of vitamin E and its importance for the prevention, progression, and therapy of cardiometabolic and inflammatory diseases as well as the rare disease termed ataxia with vitamin E deficiency (AVED), which is caused by mutations in the gene encoding for the α-tocopherol transfer protein (α-TTP). We focus on the role of vitamin E in cardiovascular diseases (CVD), non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and skin health.