Advance in the modification of phytosterols

Phytosterols are a kind of naturally active ingredients with hypolipidemic function. However,phytosterols have characteristics of insolubility in water and low solubility in oil,which greatly restricts their practical application. The modification of phytosterols will effectively improve the solubility and increase the bioavailability. The modification research of phytosterols mainly includes three aspects,improvement of oil solubility and water solubility and other modifications. The research progresses of the modification of phytosterols at home and abroad in recent ten years were summarized,the research progresses of ionic liquid- catalyzed synthesis of phytosterol esters and improvement of water solubility were focused on,and the research direction in the future was prospected.