Taurine has been shown that an amino acid found in certain foods and also manufactured by the human body – slows aging in animals when it is given as a supplement, which could be promising anti -aging treatment for people. But now, a new study has raised questions about Taurine's relationship with aging.
The study, published Thursday, June 5 in the journal Sciencemeasured the taurine in the blood of three groups of people in adulthood, as well as in the blood of the monkeys and adult mice. Some previous studies have revealed that taurine in circulation decreases with age, which could help explain why taurine supplements improve certain signs of aging while extending the lifespan – at least in laboratory animals.
However, these previous studies had limits. For example, most of them were “in transverse cut” – meaning rather than following the same organisms over time, they looked at many different age organizations at a given moment. This approach has produced contradictory results, various items indicating a decrease, increase or stability of taurine levels with age.
To gain clarity, the new study included both transversal and longitudinal data, the latter included blood samples taken at different times from the same groups of people and laboratory animals they were aging. In the end, what scientists have noticed is that taurine has not decreased with age; Instead, it has increased or remained stable in all the groups studied.
In addition, the differences in taurine levels observed between individuals “are generally much more important” than the degree of change observed in adulthood, co-author of the study Maria Emilia FernandezA postdoctoral scholarship holder of the National Institute of Aging (NIA), said at a press conference on June 3. Thus, the weak taurine is “little likely to serve as a good biomarker of aging,” she said.
“The main point to remember is that a drop in taurine is not a universal characteristic of aging,” said Joseph BaurProfessor of physiology at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine who was not involved in the study.
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Nevertheless, amino acid can still be linked to certain age-related changes in the body, he told Live Science in an email, adding that “since other studies have shown advantages, including the extension of lifespan in mice, I think that the case remains to explore the potential for supplementation in taurine to improve health.” That said, the new study does no argument for or against the therapeutic value of taurine supplements, he said.
“There is a divergence”
The new study included data of more than 740 participants in Longitudinal Study of Baltimore from aging who were between 26 and 100 years old. It also included data of more than 70 people aged 20 to 85 who participated in the study of the Balearic aging islands, carried out in Mallorca, as well as data of around 160 people aged 20 to 68 years in the research cohort in predictive medicine in Atlanta. The team also analyzed the blood of Macaques Rhesus (Macaca MULATTA) aged 3 to 32 years and blood mouse blood from 9 to 27 months, roughly covering the ages of maturity from reproduction to old age and death.
In most of these cohorts, “Taurine has shown an increase in age,” said Fernandez. The only exceptions were male mice of an arm of the study and men of the research group in predictive medicine, both of which showed stable taurine levels over time. Scientists do not know why these two groups have diverged from the general trend.
The researchers also studied if the levels of taurine have shown an association with health measures that change with age, such as muscle strength. But the connections they found were “incoherent inside and through cohorts”, undergoing the idea that low levels of taurine cause such age -related changes.
However, this aspect of the study was not exhaustive. For example, a 2023 Study of taurine found that the complement of taurine in average age mice was linked to a better metabolism of sugar and damage to less extensive DNA in animals, but the new study did not examine these other aspects of aging.
To complicate the image of what the taurine does in health and illness, the concentrations of amino acid are known to differ between people with different medical conditions. For example, people with obesity have lower taurine concentrations compared to people of lower weight, but when you cross the threshold in severe obesity, you see a surge in taurine, noted the authors of the study. In cancer, taurine rises in leukemia but in breast cancer, added Fernandez at the press conference.
And at the start, the taurine plays many roles in the healthy body, serving as a key component of biliary saltswhich are compounds made by the liver that help the body digest fat. It also helps to stimulate the supply of body antioxidants and build key proteins in mitochondriaCell powers.
Given all this complexity, can taurine levels be an indirect indicator of anything?
“The short answer is no – it is not yet a reliable biomarker of anything”, co -author of the study Rafael de Cabosaid the chief of the gerontology branch for the translation of NIA, at the press conference. “I think we have to dig into the basic mechanisms … before it can be used reliably as a marker.”
However, given that there are existing studies that suggest that taurine plays a role in aging, scientists always see the value of studying it more. Vijay YadavAssociate professor at the Rutgers New Jersey Medical School who co-wrote the Taurine 2023 study, is involved in a current clinical trial to see if the daily supplements of taurine have an effect on aging in middle age humans.
“This trial, we hope, will generate sufficiently rigorous data to show – or not – whether supplementation delays the rhythm of aging in humans [or] Increases health and physical form, “he said at the press conference. For the moment, however, Yadav said that there was not yet clinical evidence to support taurine for anti-aging purposes, and the authors of the new study have agreed.
Dr Luigi FerrucciA co-author of the new study and scientific director of NIA, said that he thought that a more in-depth study of the role of taurine in aging could reveal new promising avenues for treatment, even if they do not end up being taurine supplements.
“There is a gap between different studies, and this gap must be analyzed more in depth,” said Ferrucci at the press conference. “They can reveal important mechanisms with aging that could be … an intervention target.”
This article is for information only and is not supposed to offer medical advice.
