As is commonly known there are many vitamins, the vitamin B complex group being one of the most well known. An important vitamin B complex group vitamin is vitamin B6, which is water-soluble. Moreover, this vitamin comes in various forms, one of which is an active form, known by the name pyridoxal phosphate or PLP. PLP serves as cofactor in a variety of reactions including from amino acid metabolism, (in particular in reactions such as transamination, deamination, and decarboxylation). To complicate matters however, there are in fact seven alternate forms of this same vitamin. These include pyridoxine (PN), pyridoxine 5’-phosphate (PNP), pyridoxal (PL), pyridoxamine (PM), pyridoxamine 5’-phosphate (PMP), 4-pyridoxic acid (PA), and the aforementioned pyridoxal 5’-phosphate (PLP). One of these forms, PA, is in fact a catabolite whose presence is found in excreted urine. For a person to absorb some of these active forms of vitamin B6 such as PLP or PMP they must first be dephosphorylized. This done via an alkaline enzyme phosphatase. There are a wide variety of biproducts from the metabolism in question, most of which find there ways into the urine and from there are excreted. One such biproduct is 4-pyridoxic acid. In fact this last biproduct is found in such large quantities that estimates of vitamin B6 metabolism birproducts show that 4-pyridoxic acid is as much as 40-60% of all the biproducts.Of course, it is not the only product of metabolism. Others include,include pyridoxal, pyridoxamine, and pyridoxine.

Vitamin B6 Metabolism References