Most adults need 5 mg of pantothenic acid (vitamin B5) per day. This is the Adequate Intake level set for anyone 14 and older, and most people hit it through food alone without thinking about it. The number shifts slightly for pregnant women (6 mg) and those who are breastfeeding (7 mg), and children need less depending on age.
Daily Intake by Age and Life Stage
Because true deficiency is so rare, researchers haven’t established a formal Recommended Dietary Allowance for pantothenic acid. Instead, the guideline is an Adequate Intake (AI), which represents the amount considered sufficient for nearly everyone based on observed dietary patterns.
- Birth to 6 months: 1.7 mg
- 7 to 12 months: 1.8 mg
- 1 to 3 years: 2 mg
- 4 to 8 years: 3 mg
- 9 to 13 years: 4 mg
- 14 years and older: 5 mg
- Pregnant women: 6 mg
- Breastfeeding women: 7 mg
These values are the same for males and females at every age except during pregnancy and lactation.
What Pantothenic Acid Does in Your Body
Vitamin B5 is the raw material your body uses to build coenzyme A, a molecule involved in hundreds of chemical reactions. Coenzyme A is central to how you extract energy from fats, carbohydrates, and proteins. Without it, your cells can’t run the citric acid cycle, the core engine of energy production.
Beyond energy, coenzyme A helps your body manufacture cholesterol, steroid hormones, vitamins A and D, and acetylcholine (a chemical messenger important for muscle movement and memory). It also plays a role in modifying proteins after they’re built, a process that fine-tunes how those proteins function. In short, B5 touches nearly every metabolic pathway you have, which is part of why it’s found in such a wide range of foods.
Best Food Sources
The name “pantothenic” comes from the Greek word for “everywhere,” and that’s a fair description of where you’ll find it. Beef liver, chicken breast, tuna, avocado, sunflower seeds, mushrooms, potatoes, and eggs are all solid sources. Fortified breakfast cereals and yogurt contribute meaningfully too. A single chicken breast or a cup of shiitake mushrooms can supply a large portion of your daily 5 mg.
One thing to keep in mind: your body only absorbs about 40 to 60% of the pantothenic acid in a typical diet. This was factored into the AI recommendations, so you don’t need to eat double. But it does mean that heavily processed diets, where B vitamins are stripped during manufacturing and not always added back, could leave you with less than you’d expect on paper.
Is There an Upper Limit?
No Tolerable Upper Intake Level has been established for pantothenic acid. This isn’t because any amount is guaranteed safe; it’s because researchers haven’t found consistent evidence of toxicity even at high doses. The vitamin is water-soluble, so your kidneys flush out what your body doesn’t need. At very high intakes (multiple grams per day), some people report diarrhea or digestive discomfort, but serious adverse effects haven’t been documented in the medical literature.
Pantothenic acid also has no known clinically relevant interactions with medications, which makes it one of the more straightforward B vitamins from a safety standpoint.
Higher Doses Used in Research
You’ll occasionally see recommendations for pantothenic acid doses far above 5 mg, usually for acne or cholesterol. These come from a small number of studies, and the doses involved are dramatically higher than the standard AI.
In one preliminary acne trial, participants took 10 grams per day (2,000 times the AI), split into four doses, alongside a topical cream containing 20% pantothenic acid. People with moderate acne saw near-complete improvement within two months, while severe cases took six months or longer. Participants eventually tapered down to 1 to 5 grams per day for maintenance. This remains a preliminary finding, not a standard treatment recommendation.
For cholesterol, the research uses pantethine, a derivative of pantothenic acid, rather than straight vitamin B5. Clinical trials have typically used 600 to 900 mg of pantethine per day in divided doses. A triple-blinded trial of 120 North American adults found that this dosing range favorably shifted LDL cholesterol metabolism over 16 weeks. A separate Japanese trial of 201 high-risk individuals used 600 mg daily, split into three doses, over the same timeframe. The median dose across published pantethine trials is 900 mg per day. These are specific to pantethine, not interchangeable with regular pantothenic acid supplements.
Deficiency Is Extremely Rare
Because B5 appears in so many foods, deficiency is almost unheard of in people eating a reasonably varied diet. The clearest historical example comes from severely malnourished prisoners of war in the Far East, who developed a condition called “burning feet syndrome,” marked by painful tingling and burning sensations in the feet. This was attributed to pantothenic acid deficiency alongside broader malnutrition. In modern populations with access to diverse food, isolated B5 deficiency essentially doesn’t occur.
If you’re eating a mix of meats, vegetables, grains, and dairy, you’re almost certainly getting your 5 mg without any effort. Supplements are widely available in B-complex formulas and multivitamins, but for most people they’re unnecessary for meeting the basic daily target.