What is it about?
Vitamin B12 or cobalamin is an essential water-soluble vitamin. Some people don't consume foods containing cobalamin and are recommended to take additional cobalamin to meet the body's need. Cobalamin can be found in vitamin syrups, tablets and injections. In this study, we compared the stability of three different vitamin B12, namely cyanocobalamin, hydroxocobalamin and methylcobalamin when the vitamins were exposed to lights, heat, pH and added with other B vitamins. The results of our study showed that sorbitol added to the vitamins improved the stability of the vitamins. Cyanocobalamin is the most stable followed by hydroxocobalamin and methylcobalamin.
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Why is it important?
The results are significant for manufacturers of vitamins enriched beverages and multi-vitamin syrups so the vitamin will not degrade during processing and storage. The data is also useful for analysts working in the laboratory who determine vitamins foods, beverages, supplements and other products.
Perspectives
The work was important to me knowing that the quantitative determination of vitamin B12 is quite challenging because the vitamin degrades easily during the process. The co-author of this paper was my Honours student who completed the laboratory work as a part of his research project. He was an outstanding student and worked very hard to get consistent and robust data.
Dr Maria Veronica Chandra-Hioe
University of New South Wales
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Sorbitol enhances the physicochemical stability of B12 vitamers, International Journal for Vitamin and Nutrition Research, April 2019, Hogrefe Publishing Group,
DOI: 10.1024/0300-9831/a000578.
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