The sterol content and composition of the small intestinal muccsa has been studied in the rat, guinea pig, and rabbit. In the three species, noncholesterol sterols formed a large proportion of the total sterol content. In the rat, the contribution due to plant sterols was much smaller than in the guinea pig and rabbit, but in all three species the amount of campesterol present seemed disproport...

Unlike most animals, insects lack the capacity to synthesize sterols that are required in lipid biostructures, as precursors to important steroid hormones and as regulators of developmental processes. Therefore insects must acquire sterols from their diet. Hundreds of different sterols have been identified and the review starts by documenting the occurrence of sterols in different insect foods....

OBJECTIVE Sitosterolemia is characterized by elevated plasma levels of plant sterols, hypercholesterolemia and premature coronary heart disease (CHD). CHD develops in some subjects with sitosterolemia, despite having normal plasma cholesterol levels, suggesting that high circulating levels of plant sterols may be atherogenic. We tested whether elevated plasma levels of plant sterols (sitosterol...

The effects of stigmasterol, sitosterol, campesterol, and cholesterol on the phase properties of dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine bilayers have been compared by differential scanning calorimetry and x-ray diffraction. The sterols were equally effective at progressively reducing the cooperativity and the enthalpy of the dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine phase transition as their concentrations in the...

Effects of dietary unesterified plant sterols and plant sterol oleates and stearates on absorption and metabolism of cholesterol were compared in rats fed a cholesterol-supplemented diet. Fecal excretion of neutral steroids (cholesterol plus coprostanol) in rats fed unesterified plant sterols or plant sterol oleates was significantly higher than in those fed the control diet or plant sterol ste...

13C/12C ratios of sets of compounds, algal sterols and terpenes, isolated from dinoflagellate symbiont (zooxanthellae)-bearing soft corals and gorgonians were determined. In most cases, a significant difference was found between the delta 13C values of the terpenes and of the algal sterols from the same set, the algal sterols containing less 13C than the terpenes. These results can only be expl...

1. Twenty-two sterols were identified in the starfish Asterias rubens (Phylum, Echinodermata; Class, Asteroidea). 2. The major 4-demethyl sterols had a Delta(7) bond and the C(27) compound 5alpha-cholest-7-en-3beta-ol predominated over other mono- and di-unsaturated sterols belonging to the C(26), C(27), C(28) and C(29) series. 3. Small amounts of cholest-5-en-3beta-ol and 5alpha-cholestan-3bet...

We investigate the miscibility phase behavior of lipid monolayers containing a wide variety of sterols. Six of the sterols satisfy a definition from an earlier study of "membrane-active sterols" in bilayers (cholesterol, epicholesterol, lathosterol, dihydrocholesterol, ergosterol, and desmosterol), and six do not (25-hydroxycholesterol, lanosterol, androstenolone, coprostanol, cholestane, and c...

The cholesterol-lowering effect of plant sterols was first discovered in the early 1950s. However, it is only recently that plant sterols have become clinically important, when advances in food-technology have made it possible to combine sterols with a variety of food products including margarines, yogurts, fruit juices and cereal bars. We review the clinical trial evidence of lipid-lowering ef...

BACKGROUND The aim of our study has to evaluate the antiproliferative effect of polyphenols and sterols extracted from the virgin argan oil on three human prostatic cell lines (DU145, LNCaP, and PC3). METHODS Cytotoxicity, anti-proliferative effects and nuclear morphological changes of cells were analyzed after treatment with sterols and polyphenols. The results were compared to 2-methoxyestr...