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Human Nutrition and Metabolism

Absorption, Distribution and Excretion of Selenium from Beef and Rice in Healthy North American Men^1,2

U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, Western Human Nutrition Research Center and Department of Nutrition, University of California at Davis, Davis, CA

³To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: chawkes{at}whnrc.usda.gov.

Previous metabolic studies of selenium used pure selenium compounds with pharmacologic activities unrelated to selenium nutrition. Healthy men were fed foods naturally high or low in selenium while confined to a metabolic research unit. Selenium intake was 47 µg/d (595 nmol/d) for 21 d while energy intakes and body weights were stabilized and selenium excretion and intake came into metabolic balance. On d 22, selenium intake was changed to either 14 µg/d (177 nmol/d, low selenium) or 297 µg/d (3.8 µmol, high selenium) for the remaining 99 d. The absorption, distribution and excretion of selenium in food were similar to selenomethionine, and distinctly different from sodium selenite. Daily urinary selenium excretion and selenium concentrations in plasma and RBC showed the largest responses to selenium intake relative to interindividual variation. Urinary selenium and plasma selenium responded most rapidly to changes in selenium intake, whereas RBC reflected longer-term selenium intake. Given the difficulty of 24-h urine collections outside a metabolic research unit, RBC and plasma selenium seem to be the most useful indicators of selenium intake. During the intervention period, the high selenium group retained 15 mg (190 µmol) of selenium, with 5 mg (63 µmol) going into skeletal muscle. The low selenium group lost only 0.9 mg (11 µmol) of whole-body selenium but lost 3.3 mg (42 µmol) from muscle, indicating that selenium was redistributed from muscle to tissues that have a higher metabolic priority for selenium such as testes. Fecal excretion decreased by half, representing an important but previously underappreciated adaptation to selenium restriction.

KEY WORDS: • selenium absorption • selenium balance • selenium excretion • food selenium • skeletal muscle

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