Next to sphingolipids, phosphatidylcholine is the most important essential phospholipid in the human body. As such it occurs ubiquitously in the human organism.
In Italy at the end of the 1980s, Dr Sergio Maggiori began to use phosphatidylcholine in the infiltration of xanthelasma with satisfactory results. He presented this method at the 5th International Mesotherapy Congress in Paris in 1988. 1 In 1995 the Brazilian dermatologist, Dr Patricia Rittes, in a successful self-experiment, treated her lower eye pads by injecting phosphatidylcholine under her eyes. In Europe, further study of the medicament started in 2001, and the first treatments were made by the author in late 2002. In 2003 "Network Lipolysis" was founded in Germany by Ulrich Bunzek and Dirk Brandl and with this started the European investigation of the scientific background of this new esthetic therapy.
Phosphatidylcholine makes up the largest choline (lecithin) reservoir in the body and is found in bile. It facilitates the emulsification of fat into the tiniest particles within the nanosphere, enabling the absorption and transportation of fat. After subcutaneous injections of phosphatidylcholine into fat tissue, the adipocytes burst and phosphatidylcholine increases the secretion of triaglycerol-rich lipoproteins.
The medicine, Lipostabil N is a composition of 70% phosphatidylcholine, which uses deoxycholate 4.2% as solvent and benzyl alcohol 3% as preservative.
All these ingredients burst the membranes of the fat cell, with deoxycholate as the most active part.
Rotunda et al . showed that injecting deoxycholate alone produced similar effects as Lipopstabil N ® . This proves only to be true regarding the bursting of the adipocyte membranes, but the following enzymatic reaction, which leads to the dissolution of fat by producing an emulsion of nano-sized monoglycerides that is transported into the liver and metabolized by beta-oxidation, in the citric acid cycle, is only the result of the function of phosphatidylcholine.
The phosphatidylcholine combination as it is in Lipostabil N ® has first a lipocyte-destroying effect and then a lipolytic action by liberating a long cascade of fat down-breaking enzymes, which is active over a period of 8 weeks.
Phosphatidylcholine is also known to protect the liver through the regeneration of liver cells in cases of fat liver hepatitis and alcoholic hepatic steatosis. Its effectiveness also helped save the life of a patient with death-cap mushroom poisoning following the administration of high doses of phosphatidylcholine.
More recently, claims have been made regarding the positive use of phosphatidylcholine in AIDS cases, particularly in the reduction of lipodystrophy – buffalo hump – without the need for surgery.
The lecithin level in nerve cells also determines conductivity and thus represents a key role in the trouble-free workings of brain and nerve functions. An increase in acetylcholine through the addition of phosphatidylcholine has led to the realization that the condition of manically depressive patients (bipolar depression) and even Alzheimer patients can be greatly improved.Clinical trials have also been conducted in regard to dyskinesia, chorea Huntington, Friedreich's ataxie, cortex atrophies, and myasthenia gravis.
Soya phosphatidylcholine improves the serum lecithin levels three times more than choline chloride, which has been used in neurology so far. This produces a significant rise in the acetylcholine level, and in this way phosphatidylcholine found its way to the treatment of the previously mentioned conditions. In the lungs and inner organs, phosphatidylcholine works as a superficially active substance (surfactant) that prevents alveolar collapse at the end of respiration. Contrary to soya-phosphatidylcholine used in lipolysis injections, this phosphatidylcholine contains a high percentage of palmatin acids: a saturated fatty acid. A mixture of 90% phosphatidylcholine and 10% proteins (surfactant proteins SP-A and surfactant protein D) is naturally produced in the pneumocytes during fetal lung development from the 35th week of pregnancy and spreads like a film over the surface of the alveoli; it can be found in the bronchial secretion and in the amniotic fluid. This facilitates the expansion of the collapsed alveoli in the newborn baby and forms part of the protective and self-cleaning mechanism of the bronchial system. In cases of surfactant deficiency, it is, apart from other measures, installed in the bronchial system.
Phosphatidylcholine is the major component of all cell membranes (70% phosphatidylcholine, 30% phosphatidylserine) and the lipoproteins, in particular the high-density lipoproteins (HDLs) that circulate in the blood. It plays an important role in intra- and extracellular metabolic transport by controlling what goes in and what comes out of the cell again. In cases of phosphatidylcholine deficiency, the cell wall hardens so that both the entry of nutritious elements and the transportation of metabolic products become more difficult. This can create a delay in the cell functions and results in the premature aging of the cell.
Through its high concentration of transport lipoproteins, phosphatidylcholine has a great influence on the regulation of the lipid homeostasis. It activates the L-CAT (lecithin-cholesterol-acyl transferase) so that accumulations of cholesterol consisting of atherosclerotic plaques are dissolved and transported back to the liver. It has been proved that the reabsorption of cholesterol deposits is far more effective through vegetable soya phosphatidylcholine, with its highly unsaturated alphalinolic acids, than through phosphatidylcholine from eggs with its saturated fatty acids. Lipostabil N ® contains the highly unsaturated soya phosphatidylcholine. Phosphatidylcholine also brings about a considerable decrease in triglyceride synthesis and triglyceride levels, a marked increase in HDLs in the cholesterol metabolism, and the suppression of atherosclerotic plaques within blood vessels and their subsequent dissolution. Dr Sam Baxas, at the Medical Center in Binningen, Switzerland, developed a slightly altered formula of phosphatidylcholine and achieved great success in the field of atherosclerosis by dissolving fat deposits inside the blood vessels using this substance. In this case, it is referred to as X-plaques.
Phosphatidylcholine, as the most important membrane lipid, also plays an important role as a cause of inflammations through the biosynthesis of prostaglandins, leukotrienes, and thromboxanes. Arachidonic acids could be one of the fatty acids bound at phosphatidylcholine in the membranes. Phospholipasis A2 releases arachidonic acids from the membrane lipids. Through cyclooxygenasis develops prostaglandin H2, the precursor of all physiologic prostaglandins and thromboxanes. Chemically, phosphatidylcholine is a glycerophospholipid consisting of glycerol (CH 2 OH-CHOH-CH 2 OH), which has all three carbon atoms attached. Fatty acids have attached themselves to the first two and phosphoric choline has attached itself to the third. One can say that the phosphatidylcholine molecule consists of one head of phosphoric choline, a centerpiece of glycerine, and a tail with two varying fatty acids (R' = fatty acid).
Through the variety of these fatty acids, a number of functional possibilities for phosphatidylcholine in the body arise. The type of fatty acid and the balance between omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids in phosphatidylcholine can, among other things, also be influenced by nutrition.
Lecithin choline is essential, which means that it has to be supplied to the body through nourishment. As soon as it is absorbed in the cell, it is phosphorylated through choline kinase and becomes phosphatic choline. Finally, phosphatic-choline, transferases allows phosphatidylcholine to be produced over two intermediate steps.
Through scientific research into the lipolytic mechanism of phosphatidylcholine on adipocytes, it was found that phosphatidylcholine in fatty tissue is hydrolyzed through phospholipase A2 and D, resulting in apolar phosphorylated acids and polar cholines. Cholines are lipotropic substances that function as emulsifiers and are, among other things, components of the phospholipids. Protein kinase C (PKC) causes fat-splitting lipases, i.e., hormone-sensitive lipases (HSLs), triglyceride lipase (TGL), diglyceride lipase (DGL), and monoglyceride lipase (MGL). First hydrolyze triglycerides to diglycerides and then to monoglycerides, which are transformed into fatty acids and glycerol. With the help of lipoproteins, phosphatidylcholine is a major component of HDL. These remnants are transported to the liver and are metabolized. |
