You may want to keep the storage of taurine supplements as part of your anti-aging cocktail. Research published today has no evidence that our taurine levels are shrinking as we age, unlike certain previous studies.
Scientists from the National Institutes of Health have led research, published Thursday in science. They analyzed the long -term data of human past studies, mouse and monkeys, noting that the levels of taurine did not change much over time and varied considerably between individual animals. The results suggest that taurine is not a good marker for age and question the idea that it can prolong healthy aging.
“Taurine in circulation does not drop with age in healthy individuals of these three mammals species through the lifespan of adults,” said the main study researcher on Tuesday, Maria Emilia Fernandez, a postdoctoral scholarship in the branch of the Translational Institute of the National NIH Institute on aging, during a press conference announcing Tuesday.
Taurine is a semi-sistent amino acid and an important micronutrient. Our bodies naturally produce taurine, although they can also be easily found in animal products, supplements and energy drinks (people have once collected taurine in bulls, but it’s now product synthetically). Taurine plays Many roles in the body, such as helping us make bile acid and maintaining our stable blood pressure. In recent years, some studies have indicated that taurine – or rather loss of taurine – is also a key engine of our worsening of health as we age.
A study in 2023 which examined several different animal models, for example, find that the levels of taurine circulating in the blood have decreased as animals were aging. When the researchers added Taurine supplements to the diet of animals, it seemed to prolong slightly the lifespan of mice and worms in addition to improving the health of older monkeys. The study also revealed an association between lower taurine levels in humans and an increased risk of age -related diseases.
Although this is not the first research to suggest the anti-aging potential of Taurine, it has certainly aroused the attention of people, including the authors behind this last research. However, not all research on the subject has not supported this link, and many studies have not analyzed taurine in people and animals at a given time or for a relatively brief period. The researchers behind the new study wanted to take a closer look at how these levels fluctuated over time on different species and in men and women.
They have turned to other studies or existing projects involving people, mice and rhesus monkeys which had longitudinal data on the levels of taurine in the blood – which could follow these levels through the lifespan. Overall, they found that the levels of taurine did not decrease any of the animals or humans they had studied; If anything, taurine levels generally increased over time in different groups (the only exception being male mice). They also found that differences in taurine levels between individuals could sometimes vary considerably and that these differences were generally greater than the changes observed during the life of an animal.
In other words, there does not seem to be a lot of connection between taurine and aging, at least in this research. “Based on these results, we conclude that low -movement taurine concentrations are unlikely to serve as a good aging biomarker,” wrote the researchers.
These are still results of a single study, so more research will be necessary to settle the question. The results also do not mean that taurine is not important for our health. And it is always possible that low levels of taurine can contribute to chronic health problems, including conditions which become more common as we age. Likewise, there may be elderly people with low taurine who would benefit from increasing their contribution.
Vijay Yadav, one of the authors of the 2023 study, and his colleagues currently manage a randomized clinical trial testing if taurine supplements can improve the health and physical form of adults of middle age. He expects the trial to end by the end of 2025, the analysis to come shortly after. For the moment, however, Yadav does not say that people should fall taurine as if they were candies.
“We cannot really recommend any supplementation. We must better understand if it is not (improve health); which can only be treated by a trial controlled by placebo,” Yadav said at the same press conference on Tuesday. “And of course, there are many more questions that must be addressed before they can really understand the more depth biology of a particular molecule.”
Although there are certainly things that people can already do to stay healthier in their golden years, such as exercise regularly, history for anti-aging drugs or supplements remain in the moment. And it seems that a universal youth fountain – if we can never really find it – will probably contain no taurine.