Taurine: the deficiency of this micronutrient is key in aging

What opens the spigot of aging? What is it that sets in motion this complex process that affects all the organs of the body with age? Can it be reversed? Scientific research has uncovered some of the biological processes that occur in our bodies when we get older, but much is still unknown about the mechanisms that drive aging, which are closely related to our chances of living longer and better. .

A study published this week in the journal Science points to the role that taurine could play in this regard, a semi-essential micronutrient that our body produces and that we can also obtain through our diet.

According to their data, in different animal species taurine deficiency is a major driver of aging.

“Our study shows that taurine abundance declines with age and that reversing that decline [through supplementation] increases life expectancy in mice and worms and increases healthy life expectancy in macaques.”. The next step is to investigate what happens in humans,” Vijay Yadav, a researcher at the Department of Genetics and Development at Columbia University and leader of the study, explained at a press conference, stressing that it is still early to draw conclusions about the effect of taurine on people's longevity. “We do not know if it can be an antiaging therapy, but with the data obtained it is reasonable to analyze it,” he remarked.

“In any case, we must wait for the results of the trials in humans,” stressed Henning Wackerhage, head of the Exercise Biology group at the Technical University of Munich and another of the main signatories of the work, who warned that these results are in no way an invitation to consume products rich in taurine, such as some energy drinks.

The main sources of taurine are meat products, fish and shellfish.. It is also present in dairy products, eggs, and nuts, but, in addition, in recent years it has become a common ingredient in so-called energy drinks, which, in addition to this substance, contain large amounts of other ingredients, such as sugars or caffeine.

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The study “is very interesting” and “associates a dietary component with a healthy life span”; however, “to test whether taurine deficiency is also a driver of aging in humans, long-term, well-controlled trials of taurine supplementation that measure healthy life expectancy and life expectancy as outcomes are required.” “, Nabil Djouder, head of the Group of Growth Factors, Nutrients and Cancer of the National Center for Oncological Research (CNIO), who has not participated in the investigation, has pointed out to EL MUNDO.

José Alberto López, a researcher at the Cellular Plasticity and Disease laboratory at IRB Barcelona, agrees with his point of view, who considers that “it is worth analyzing in different clinical trials” both the possible relationship of taurine deficiency in diseases related to aging and The effects of a dietary supplementation in humans.

In this sense, he added, the works should also study the safety profile of the doses since, despite the fact that it is a known and studied molecule, “the doses used in animal experiments are very high.”

The importance of taurine

The research whose results are now being published, in which more than 20 teams of scientists have participated, has first shown that the blood concentration of taurine decreases with age in both mice and monkeys and in humans.. As we get older, the levels of this amino acid decrease.. Thus, the blood concentration of taurine that an elderly person has is up to 80% lower than that of a young individual.

After verifying this data in different species, the researchers wondered if this decrease was a consequence of aging or one of the causes that caused it, so they launched an experiment whose objective was to find out the effect of supplementing with taurine in the diet of a mouse sample.

They started from 250 specimens of 14 months (the equivalent of a middle age in humans). Approximately half were given a daily dose of taurine of 1,000 mg per kilogram of weight with food, while the rest were offered a safe control solution.. At the end of the experiment, the researchers found that the life expectancy of the animals that had received taurine was 10-12% higher than that of the other animals.. Likewise, the life expectancy at 28 months of these mice increased by up to 25%.

To test whether this effect of taurine also occurred in other animal species, the researchers first repeated the experiment in the nematode worm species Caenorhabditis elegans, where they also observed an extension of lifespan in four independent analyses.. In studies on the fungus Saccharomyces cerevisiae, on the other hand, taurine supplementation did not affect the prolongation of life.

The researchers then wanted to go one step further and check whether the life span gained in different species when supplementing their diet with taurine was also associated with better health.. In this way, they carried out an experiment in mice again to study the health of their bones, muscles, brain, pancreas or immune system, among other factors.

The analyzes showed positive results, with better results in bone health, metabolic profiles or the immune system. It improved muscle strength and endurance, insulin resistance, energy expenditure or weight gain associated with age, among other factors.. Furthermore, in a similar experiment in macaques, the researchers obtained similar results.

On the other hand, the scientists also verified that, at the cellular level, taurine was also associated with improvements such as a decrease in senescent cells (or zombie cells), an increase in the number of stem cells present in some tissues, better functioning of the mitochondria or a reduction in DNA damage, among other evidence.

evidence in humans

Although researchers have not yet conducted experiments to find out if taurine supplementation leads to increased longevity in humans, they have conducted studies that suggest positive effects.. Thus, they observed in a series of studies with more than 12,000 individuals that people with higher levels of taurine had fewer cases of obesity, type 2 diabetes or hypertension.. On the other hand, they also found that amino acid concentrations increased with exercise.

“The associations do not allow establishing causality,” the researchers told reporters, “but the results are consistent with the possibility that taurine deficiency contributes to human aging,” they noted.

For the moment, the investigation has not revealed the mechanisms that are behind this association, nor questions such as why the decrease in taurine levels begins or if physical exercise is capable of promoting the production of the amino acid or if what favors is its concentration in blood.

These new data on the role of taurine in aging join those recently obtained with other molecules, such as metformin or rapamycin, also associated with longevity. “The results shown by experiments with these molecules are similar. The potential advantage of taurine, if its effects are demonstrated in humans, is that, unlike metformin or rapamycin, it is not a drug, so its safety profile could be better a priori,” López points out.