# Talk:Folate

Hello, David notMD and all the editors! Can you please add data on half-life of vitamin B9? For example, what is the half life of 400 mg taken as a supplement? In general, I think that this data on half life would be useful for all vitamin articles in Wikipedia, where such data exists in scientific or health literature. If no such data exist, maybe it should be bold to explicitly state that the half-life of vitamin B9 (or other respective vitamin in case of different vitamin article) taken as a supplement is not known!? Maxim Masiutin (talk) 10:50, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

You are right, in that the article - despite GA rating - does not address pharmacokinetics. Alpers 2016 PMID26586110 would be a good starting references, and also Said 2016 21749321 and Visentin 2015 24512081. The answer is not simple. There is receptor-mediated absorption, but also potential for passive diffusion at high doses. Once absorbed there may be liver and other organ update, so that blood concentration may not be indicative. The Present Knowledge in Nuitrition ref (2020) confirms that there are two receptor proteins (PCFT and RFC) and also nonsaturable passive diffusion at pharmacological doses. The same receptor proteins function in the liver and other organs. Under non-supplemented conditions, urine and feces contain folate cleavage products. Add a supplement and intact folate is dumped in urine. David notMD (talk) 16:29, 18 April 2024 (UTC)
Thank you for the discussion on current data of folate. Besides folate, my idea was about all vitamins. The GA review is intended to be a lightweigh process and does not cover everything. I didn't mean that we should specifically address pharmacokinetics or pharmacodynamics, but I am sure that each vitamin article should cover at least two points: 1) oral absorption percentage and what affects the absorption rate if it is the case; 2) half-life (either plasma or biological or both or whatever applicable). Why it is important is that this data will shed light on whether vitamin pharmocological administration should be frequent such as B2 or (or keeps in plasma or tissues logner in lower quantities if it is the case) or it can accumulate for weeks or months such as B12.
So, I think that this absorption rate and accumulation capacity is very important in vitamin articles.
Would you please consider adding such data first and other data pharmacokinetics or pharmacodynamics afterwards? Maxim Masiutin (talk) 16:43, 18 April 2024 (UTC)
I will start addressing this absorption topic for the B vitamins. Some already have an Absorption, metabolism and excretion section, although perhaps not the detail you hope for. If there is active absorption via transfer proteins, that system can become saturated, but there is also passive diffusion, so for non-physiological dietary supplements, total amount absorbed increases while percentage decreases. What to call half-life is difficult, as there is uptake by liver and other organs, and discharge of excess in urine, so what to measure (plasma?) is problematic. David notMD (talk) 02:03, 19 April 2024 (UTC)
Thank you for acknowledging that you started addressing this issue, you've made my day! As about the transfer proteins and saturation such as the case in many vitamins, especially B vitamins, I understand that it is a complex process. My point was that at least we should start with something. Why I explicitly asked you to do that is because I could not find good information myself. I figured out a few years ago (it was first time I saw you started the big project on making all vitamin articles GA) that data on vitamins exists in sources which are hard to obtain, but you had access to these sources, which makes you a very valuable contributor. Thank you again for all your dedication and work on this megaproject. Maxim Masiutin (talk) 02:09, 19 April 2024 (UTC)
You saw I added a few data about vitamin B6 half-life in the articles related to vitamin B6, but I afraid that something that I wrote is incorrect. Can you please peer-review my edits to let me know that they were OK? I will add details in the talk page vitamin B6. Maxim Masiutin (talk) 02:27, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

Although a Good Article, this was missing detail and references on absorption, metabolism and excretion, so adding those. David notMD (talk) 13:49, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

In paragraph Dietary recommendations it says: the PRI, defined by the EFSA, is set at 330 μg/day for adults. In paragraph Food labeling it says: European Union regulations set the RI at 200 μg. Can someone please explain the difference between the terms and the values?
2A02:A210:2144:5800:187:9686:7E9F:8D2C (talk) 18:09, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

My Doc told me that some people cannot process folate because of a genetic deficicency. He therefore recommended I take methyltetrahydrofolate instead. I found no mention of this in this article or in the article on methyltetrahydrofolate. I must assume that others are also searching for this information, not just me. I do not understand this well enough to add it to the article(s) myself, so ask for somebody else to do so. 165.140.231.32 (talk) 14:33, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

I agree that the article could benefit by addition of content about Methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase. The MTHFR gene is involved in folate becoming bioactive, with one function being to prevent high concentrations of homocysteine in the blood. Variants of the gene are referred to as C677C or C677T, with one inherited from each parent, thus a person being C677CC, CT or TT. TT is least effective. What is not confirmed science is evidence that being C677TT has significant negative health effects. And even with being C677TT, solutions are either increasing folate intake via a dietary supplement, or else methyltetrahydrofolate. Did your doctor do a blood test for your folate, vitamin B12 and homocysteine levels? Identify any of your symptoms that could be linked to your genes? David notMD (talk) 20:26, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

The penultimate paragraph of the first section ends:

"In adults, normal total body folate is between 10 and 30 mg [...]. In plasma, the natural folate range is 150 to 450 nM."

Although I can imagine that different people whose job involves dealing, one lot, with plasma and the others, with normal body contents, whose usual practice when it comes to units differs, ie, mg and nM, a change here, or an addition, so that one unit is used for both ranges, would allow the reader not familiar with mg or nM (eg, me) to see quickly what the comparison is. Nick Barnett (talk) 18:55, 20 November 2025 (UTC)