Whats ETA on microzinc?

Okay, let's dive into this. It's an in-vitro study as you say. So my first thought would be it is a methodology issue. As I start to read it, it's looking like that is the case. They are measuring only normal diffusion through Caco-2 cells. That's fine for things we know primarily use passive diffusion to absorb, but we know sucrosomial magnesium does not primarily use that. It's the entire purpose for the sucrosome. Essentially they are taking an extremely complex system that is the human digestive tract, and simplifying it down to a very basic in-vitro mechanism to get some measurements. They even admit that in the study.

However, only the apical to basolateral transport was evaluated, which could not indicate the mechanism of absorption involved.

So they admit they are looking at a single limited type of absorption; one that is not the primary one for sucrosomial minerals. They even say that they are looking at the passive paracellular mechanism that relies on tight junction permeability in the small intestine. That's the primary mechanism for ionic magnesium, but not ones encased by a sucrose ester. I'd venture to guess it is also not the primary mechanism for a chelated form, either.

As demonstrated by the experiments described above, both Mg forms were able to induce all necessary protein expressions to support the mechanism of intestinal absorption. In addition, between UM and MB, the latter appeared to have greater effects compared to UM, indicating a better absorption at the intestinal level. In this context, we can hypothesize a possibly greater availability of MB compared to UM, which was confirmed by successive experiments on magnesium and calcium fluxes.

So they postulate that because both of those forms induce those protein expressions, that's the primary absorption mechanism. That's a HUGE stretch, in my opinion. Passive diffusion probably plays some role in their absorption, especially in the buffered form. I mean, buffered just means they added extra magnesium oxide into the mix. So of course passive diffusion would come into play there. There's normal magnesium oxide at play! That does NOT mean that's the primary mechanism behind the absorption of both the sucrosomial and chelated forms. All this study is telling me is that chelated magnesium glycinate mixed with magnesium oxide results in more passive diffusion through intestinal cells than sucrosomial magnesium. Well duh! I could have told you that without a study.

In these experiments with both UM and MB, the expressions of these kinases were also confirmed, indicating a shared mechanism used by both Mg forms to cross the intestinal barrier. However, MB had greater effects compared to UM on the kinase expressions, confirming its better effectiveness.

LOL, really? Because both led to expression changes in the kinases they measured, that's enough to conclude they use the exact same absorption mechanisms?!? I disagree.

Nevertheless, at the present time, there is no agreement on which single evaluation system should be used to study Mg absorption in human subjects.

Ahh, there you go! There is not an agreement on the methodologies best suited to study this. They picked one. I posit they picked the wrong one. Why not do an in-vivo study of both forms, then measure plasma levels after administration? That would get us closer to settling the matter, and actually be pertinent to real-world absorption in humans.

Also, take into account actual human clinical research.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29630135

In particular, the increase in magnesium concentration from baseline to 24 h was statistically higher in blood and in urine for Sucrosomial® magnesium compared to magnesium oxide, while in red blood cells Sucrosomial® magnesium had a statistically significant advantage compared to magnesium bisglycinate.

So we have human clinical research showing that sucrosomial magnesium is better than chelated magnesium glycinate, at least in red blood cells. I would take that in-vivo research over an in-vitro one any day of the week.

To top it all off, I am wondering if there is a financial incentive between the authors and Laborest Italia S.p.a, the makers of the buffered chelated form Trocà Mag used in the study. If you look into Francesca Uberti a little more, you will find she is suspiciously on a lot of other studies that are comparing other Laborest Italia products... Seems a bit suspect to me. Let's look at some of her other papers.

https://europepmc.org/article/pmc/pmc5622768

Laborest Italia S.p.a (Lorenzo Secondini) contributed to preparing and donating compounds. The authors wish to thank Mariangela P. Fortunato for her precious help with the language. This study was partially funded by the “DiMeT-UPO 2016” grant.

https://www.ecronicon.com/ecne/pdf/ECNE-11-00504.pdf

The authors thank Laborest Italia S.r.l which has donated substances tested. This research had the financial support of the Università del Piemonte Orientale, UPO, AGING PROJECT, Department of excellence.

https://www.intechopen.com/books/alginates-recent-uses-of-this-natural-polymer/role-of-alginates-combined-with-natural-extracts-to-prevent-the-gastric-acid-related-damage

Laborest Spa contributed by supplying the tested chemical substances.

Hmmmmm. She likes to run studies that show that products from Laborest Italia are better than others. However, she never lists conflicts of interest or external funding in the papers. Coincidence? I mean, the funding of studies obviously is going to come from the patent holders or makers of certain things. That's a given. I would not be super suspicious if they were listed. However, hiding possible conflicts of interest and obfuscating funding sources just makes me immediately raise red flags. Moreover, the university where those studies were ran, and where the authors work, is very close to the headquarters of Laborest Italia. Seems like too many coincidences for me to write it off. I also did some searching online, and it seems there were some capital transfers from Laborest Italia for some of these studies, but that is not listed on the studies themselves.

https://docplayer.it/amp/141340454-Consiglio-di-amministrazione-verbale-n-7-adunanza-straordinaria-del-giorno-18-settembre-2015.html

Relevant parts translated in Google Translate:

Considered that the Board of the Department of Translational Medicine, in the session of 14.7.2015, approved the acceptance of the contribution of Laborest Italia SpA of Nerviano (MI), aimed at research entitled Differences between chelated and liposomal iron on uptake, release and cellular safety conduct at the Physiology laboratory by prof. Claudio Molinari with the participation of Dr. Francesca Uberti; 020207 Capital transfers from other (private) Laborest Italia SpA 10,000.00 020101 Investments in research 5% Overheads at Dimet 500.00 020101 Investments in research Investments in research 9.500.00 Total 10,000.00 10,000.00 Considered that at the Department of Translational Medicine was awarded, by AIRC, a contribution for the "Start-up" 2015/18 project (RS Dott. Di Ruscio)

So that document is telling me that Laborest Italia absolutely did contribute money to these studies, at least for the iron one specifically, but that was left off the end remarks on the studies themselves. It looks like tens of thousands of dollars were "donated" by Laborest. If that's the case, and everything is on the up and up, why lie about it on the studies?