Abstract
The antioxidative activity and synergistic effect for tocopherol of spermine which is one of the typical polyamine in nature were studied using polyunsaturated oil as an autoxidized substrate.
As a result, spermine itself has no antioxidative activity since peroxide value (PV) and carbonyl value (CV) showed no differences in any autoxidation process between the experimental group with spermine and the control group without spermine. Spermine showed strong synergistic effect for tocopherol as the PV ascendance of experimental group with tocopherol was suppressed effectively in dependent manner of spermine level in the substrate. The induction period of substrates was kept up over 1200 h and tocopherol level was retained in the same period, although spermine level monitored by TLC during the autoxidation was decreased rapidly within 260 h.
From these facts, tocopherol was thought to be regenerated from tocopheroxyl radical through the hydrogen donation from amino-hydrogen of spermine and the resulting spermine radical could scavenge lipid or lipid peroxyl radicals to form lipid complexes.
