“…It has poor pharmacokinetic properties (short half-life and first-pass hepatic clearance) and multigram doses are needed to achieve therapeutic concentrations in vivo Moos et al, 2016]. However, when butyrate and other SCFAs, including lipoic acid, present as acylcarnitine esters [Knoop, 1904;Bieber et al, 1982;Bieber, 1988;Nałezcz et al, 2004;Houten and Wanders, 2010], the body's natural carnitine-acylcarnitine transport machinery actively delivers the ester into cells, an effect that substantially increases the bioavailability of the corresponding acyl-CoA [Chenault et al, 1988;Billhardt et al, 1989;Srinivas et al, 2007;Gong et al, 2008;Piermatti et al, 2008;Rosca et al, 2009;Steliou et al, 2009Steliou et al, , 2012Parameshwaran et al, 2010Parameshwaran et al, , 2012.…”