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N-Acylphosphatidylethanolamines and N-acylethanolamines increase in saliva upon food mastication: the influence of the individual nutritional status and fat type in food

Lucia De Luca, Rosalia Ferracane, Nancy Calderón Ramírez, Paola Vitaglione. Food Funct. 2020;11(4):3382-3392.

Controlled trialHumans

Design
Controlled trial
Subjects
25 healthy adults: 12 normal weight (9 women, 30.4 years) and 13 obese (8 women, 35.5 years), randomised crossover
Dose used in the study
No palmitoylethanolamide supplement; biscuits with 10% olive oil, 10% palm oil or 10% paraffin oil were chewed and salivary PEA measured
Duration
Single fasting sessions
What was measured
Salivary N-acylphosphatidylethanolamines and the N-acylethanolamines LEA, OEA and PEA by LC-high-resolution mass spectrometry in unstimulated saliva, after chewing parafilm, and after chewing each biscuit

What the authors reported

The study found:

  • Obese participants had higher salivary NAPEs (280.0 vs 121.8 ng/mL, p=0.015) and NAEs (10.8 vs 4.8 ng/mL, p=0.002) than normal-weight participants.
  • Chewing parafilm lowered OEA and PEA.
  • Biscuit chewing raised NAPEs, LEA and OEA but not PEA.
  • PEA was unchanged in normal-weight participants and fell with control and palm-oil biscuits in obese participants.

Limits of this study

A small crossover study of 25 people measuring saliva after single chewing sessions; it does not test PEA as a supplement. Funding and conflicts not stated in the abstract.

Source

PubMed 32232261 · doi:10.1039/c9fo02205h

Entry checked against the abstract on PubMed on 2026-09-22. The dose shown is the dose the researchers used. It is not a recommendation. How to read this page.