Due to significant variation in polyunsaturated fatty acid biohydrogenation products in beef it would be useful to determine if levels of trans-18:1 isomers in samples collected ante-mortem are correlated with those collected post-mortem. Beef blood (RBC), subcutaneous fat (SC) and muscle (intramuscular fat; IM) samples were collected from an experiment with dietary vitamin E with/without flaxseed (n=80) and fatty acids analyzed. Across treatments, correlation analysis of total and individual trans-18:1 isomers were performed between tissues. Correlations between SC and IM were highly significant for all individual and total trans-18:1. RBC trans-18:1 were also well correlated with other tissues except for vaccenic acid. Levels of 10t-, 12t- and 13t/14t- were amongst the best correlated between RBC and SC and IM profiles. Levels of 6t/7t/8t-, 9t-, and 15t-18:1 showed significant but lower correlation factors particularly between RBC and SC. These results confirm the possibility of utilizing blood as a non-destructive sample to predict the total and isomeric profile of trans-18:1 in beef.
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