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Research Communication

Availability of Food Folate in Humans

Institute of Nutritional Science, Department of Pathophysiology of Human Nutrition, University of Bonn, 53115 Bonn, Germany

¹To whom correspondence should be addressed.

The aim of our study was to determine whether the area-under-the-plasma-response-curve method with the positive area (AUC+) as primary analysis variable is suitable to evaluate the availability of food folate in humans. Healthy volunteers (n = 20) received four test meals in a randomized, four-period cross-over design as follows: meal A, 600 g spinach; meal B, 300 g spinach; meal C, 0.4 mg folic acid in water; meal D, folate-free control meal. Blood samples were drawn before administration of the test meals and up to 10 h postprandially. Plasma folate was significantly increased for up to 6 h after uptake of spinach and folic acid (P < 0.007), whereas the response curve after the control meal decreased slightly but significantly (P < 0.007). To calculate the net increase of plasma folate, the values were corrected by the individual predose concentrations. The AUC+ was calculated with these corrected values. The mean AUC+ was highest after consumption of meal A (71.2 ± 24.0 h x nmol/L) followed by meal C (61.8 ± 23.8 h x nmol/L) and meal B (41.4 ± 19.4 h x nmol/L). The AUC+ after meal B was significantly lower than after the other two meals (P < 0.05). The results suggest that the AUC method with multiple blood sampling is useful for assessing the availability of food folate in humans.

KEY WORDS: • folate • availability • spinach • AUC method • humans

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