Researchers at Columbia University measured taurine levels across mice, monkeys, and humans and found they fell steeply with age, by about 70 percent in mice and by more than 80 percent in monkeys and people. The team then tested what happened when the decline was reversed.
Mice given taurine supplements starting in middle age had a median lifespan 10 to 12 percent longer than untreated mice, with stronger bones, better coordination, and fewer markers of cellular aging. In middle-aged monkeys, the same supplementation improved bone density, metabolic markers, and immune function over the course of the study.
Worms given taurine also lived longer, though the effect in mice was the most thoroughly measured. No human trial has tested whether taurine supplementation extends lifespan or healthspan, and the human data in the study only showed that natural taurine levels decline with age, not what restoring them would do.
Read the original study
Singh et al., Science, 2023 · doi.org/10.1126/science.abn9257
A fading molecule, restored, bought mice more years.
Source
- Singh, P., Gollapalli, K., Mangiola, S., Schranner, D., Yusuf, M. A., Chamoli, M., Shi, S. L., Lopes Bastos, B., Nair, T., Riermeier, A., Vayndorf, E. M., Wu, J. Z., Nilakhe, A., Nguyen, C. Q., Muir, M., Kiflezghi, M. G., Foulger, A., Junker, A., Devine, J., . . . Yadav, V. K. (2023). Taurine deficiency as a driver of aging. Science, 380(6649), eabn9257. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abn9257