Taurine Effective Against High Fructose Induced Symptoms of the Metabolic Syndrome

Regular visitors of the SuppVersity know about the diverse positive effects of dietary taurine on health, body composition and exercise performance. Now, a recent study by Mesallamy et al. (Mesallamy. 2010) found another good reason for the non fish-eaters among you (fish is particularly high in taurine) some supplemental taurine in your diet / supplement regimens.

Figure 1: Effect of HFD and taurine supplementation on weight gain at days 0 and 35 of feeding.
Each value is expressed in grams. (Mesallamy. 2010. Fig. 1)

The scientists put rats on either a control diet or high fructose diet (HFD), with both groups receiving additional 300 mg/kg/day taurine via intra-peritoneal (i.p.) route for 35 days. While the decrease in body weight gain illustrated in figure 1 is relatively low, the overall effect of taurine on makers of the metabolic syndrome was significant:

Fructose-fed rats showed significantly impaired glucose tolerance, impaired insulin sensitivity,
hypertriglyceridemia, hypercholesterolemia, hyperhomocysteinemia (HHcy), lower total antioxidant capacity (TAC), lower paraoxonase (PON) activity, and higher nitric oxide metabolites (NOx) concentration, when compared to rats fed on control diet. Supplementing the fructose-fed rats with taurine has ameliorated the rise in HOMA by 56%, triglycerides (TGs) by 22.5%, total cholesterol (T-Chol) by 11%, and low density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) by 21.4%. Taurine also abolished any significant difference of TAC, PON activity and NOx concentration among treated and control groups. TAC positively correlated with PON in both rats fed on the HFD and those received taurine in addition to the HFD.

While the human equivalent dose of the 300mg/kg taurine used in the study is about 100mg for a person weighing 70kg, previous studies on the positive health effects of taurine have used 1.5-3.0g of taurine - and this would also be my suggestion for those of you who have now become interested in the health benefits of this sulfur-amino acid.