Egg white nanocarriers for folic acid: profile of in vitro gastrointestinal digestion products and biological activity of the vitamin

CAROLINA ARZENI; OSCAR E PÉREZ; GUY LE BLANC; ANA MR PILOSOF

Congreso; 4th International Conference of Food Digestion.; 2014

COST Action FA 1005 INFOGEST

The objective of this work was to evaluate the profile of digestion products and the biological activity of folic acid (FA) in egg white (EW) nanocarriers designed to deliver this vitamin. The binding of FA with two kinds of high intensity ultrasound-made EW nanoparticles (US and TS) was promoted to generate FA nanocarriers (USF and TSF). Then, an in vitro gastrointestinal digestion of the samples was performed. After that, the pattern of digestion was determined by high performance liquid chromatography and the biological activity of FA was determined by a microbiological assay using folate-dependent L. rhamnosus. The digestion protocol was adequate to emulate the degree of gastrointestinal proteolysis. The obtained peptides profile showed apparent differences between FA nanocarriers and nanoparticles samples. The release of FA from the nanocarriers after the in vitro gastrointestinal digestion of the samples is an indication that FA would be bioaccessible in the site of absorption. When FA was supplied to L. rhamnosus culture medium in the form of digested nanocarriers, the microbial growth was higher than for the digested vitamin alone, which indicated that the bioavailability of FA for L. rhamnosus would be enhanced by the interaction of the vitamin with EW nanoparticles. Binding of FA to EW nanoparticles also proved to be beneficial for the degradation of digestion-resistant EW proteins. EW nanocarriers would constitute an adequate system for the preservation, transport and target delivery of FA.