Data Suggests Taurine Does Not Decline with Age in Primates
A study from a few years ago showed that circulating taurine levels declined with age in mice, and taurine supplementation extended healthy life span. That sparked some interest in the research community in corroborating those findings. Here, researchers show that matters relating to taurine and taurine supplementation are not straightforward, as in their data sets taurine from blood samples does not decline with age, and is not straightforwardly associated with age-related issues. It remains the case that conducting a study in people with low taurine levels would be comparatively simple to carry out, albeit expensive as is the case for any clinical trial, but the choice of what to assess as an outcome is now more complex than it was.
Taurine recently gained popularity as dietary supplement due to recent research that found supplementation with taurine improved multiple age-related traits and extended lifespan in model organisms (worms and mice). However, there is no solid clinical data that shows its supplementation benefits humans.
In a new study, researchers measured taurine concentration in longitudinally collected blood from participants in the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging (aged 26-100), rhesus monkeys (aged 3-32 years) and mice (aged 9-27 months). Taurine concentrations increased with age in all groups, except in male mice in which taurine remained unchanged. Similar age-related changes in taurine concentrations were observed in two cross-sectional studies of geographically distinct human populations, the Balearic Islands Study of Aging (aged 20-85) from the Balearic region of Mallorca, and the Predictive Medicine Research cohort (aged 20-68) from Atlanta, Georgia, as well as in the cross-sectional arm of the Study of Longitudinal Aging in Mice.
Researchers also found that the relation between taurine and muscle strength or body weight was inconsistent. For example, analyses of gross motor function highlight the limitations of considering solely circulating taurine changes as indicative of biological aging, as comparatively low motor function performance can be associated either with high or low concentrations of taurine, whereas in other cases, no relation at all is found between these variables.