Advances in
eISSN: 2378-3168
Submit manuscript...
Editorial Volume 2 Issue 4
Obesity and taurine
Mohammad Reza Sattari,1,2
Verify Captcha
Regret for the inconvenience: we are taking measures to prevent fraudulent form submissions by extractors and page crawlers. Please type the correct Captcha word to see email ID.
Siminozar Mashayekhi3
Verify Captcha
Regret for the inconvenience: we are taking measures to prevent fraudulent form submissions by extractors and page crawlers. Please type the correct Captcha word to see email ID.
1Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Iran
2Department of Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology, University of Toronto, Canada
3Department of Clinical Pharmacy, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Iran
Correspondence: Mohammad Reza Sattari, Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Faculty of Pharmacy, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, 29 Bahman Ave, Tabriz, Iran, Tel +98 413 3341315, Fax +98 413 3340798
Received: May 01, 2015 | Published: May 8, 2015
Citation: Sattari MR, Mashayekhi S. Obesity and taurine. Adv Obes Weight Manag Control. 2015;2(4):70-71. DOI: 10.15406/aowmc.2015.02.00022
Abbreviations
BMI, body mass index; TC, total cholesterol; MSG, monosodium glutamate
Editorial
Obesity is a medical condition in which excess body fat has accumulated to the extent that it may have a negative effect on health, leading to reduced life expectancy and/or increased health problems. In Western countries, people are considered obese when their body mass index (BMI), exceeds 30kg/m2.1 Taurine (2-aminoethane sulfonic acid) is a β-amino acid that differs from other amino acids by having a sulfonic acid group instead of a carboxylic acid group. It is known as a conditionally essential amino acid, which is present in the brain, heart, liver, neutrophils, retina and kidneys of mammals in high concentrations.2–4 It acts as an antioxidant, xenobiotic conjugant, osmoregulator, intracellular calcium flux regulator, bile acid conjugator, neuromodulator, cell membrane stabilizer and plays an important role in cell proliferation and viability.3–5 Taurine is known to have regulatory activities in gastrointestinal tract including modulation of acid secretion and gastric motility;6 besides, it protects the gastrointestinal mucosa from the injuries.7
Taurine plays an important role in reducing physiological stress. Recent studies indicated that taurine might serve as an anti-obesity agent at the cellular level. Taurine plays an important role in reducing fat deposition by modulating cellular pathways for lipid accumulation and stimulating mobility, but not the pathways for lipid biosynthesis and food intake.8
In a study, taurine was effective in treating fatty liver of children with simple obesity regardless of the success/failure of weight control.9 In another study, dietary intake of taurine and glycine correlated negatively with body mass gain and total fat mass, while intake of all other amino acids correlated positively. Furthermore taurine and glycine intake correlated positively with improved plasma lipid profile, i.e., lower levels of plasma lipids and higher HDL-to-total cholesterol ratio.10
You et al.,11 demonstrated that, the serum taurine level was negatively correlated with serum total cholesterol (TC) level and positively correlated with serum adiponectin level. Authors suggested that dietary taurine supplementation has beneficial effects on total cholesterol and adiponectin levels in high-fat diet-induced obesity rats.
In a study, dietary taurine supplementation prevented high fat diet-induced obesity with increased resting energy expenditure in rats.12 Lin et al.,13 indicated that taurine treatment attenuates the infiltration of adipose tissue by macrophages and modulates the phenotype of macrophages, which suggest that taurine is a valuable food constituent with a potential to attenuate chronic inflammation in adipose tissue and improve obesity-related insulin resistance. Cao et al.,14 suggested that taurine prevents obesity in monosodium glutamate (MSG)-treated rats and may be closely associated with energy metabolism.
Maternal obesity is another dilemma with women. Maternal obesity increases the risk of poor pregnancy result including stillbirth, pre-eclampsia, fetal growth restriction and fetal overgrowth. These pregnancy complications are associated with dysfunctional syncytiotrophoblast, the transporting epithelium of the human placenta. Ditchfield et al.,15 showed that taurine uptake into placental syncytiotrophoblast by the taurine transporter protein (TauT) is lower in obese women (BMI≥30kg/m) than in women of ideal weight (BMI 18.5-24.9kg/m) and explored potential regulatory factors. They proposed that the reduction in placental TauT activity in maternal obesity could lower syncytiotrophoblast taurine concentration, compromise placental development and function and reduce the driving force for taurine efflux to the fetus thereby increasing the risk of poor pregnancy outcome.
Taurine has many different biological and physiological functions, including bile salt conjugation, osmoregulation, membrane stabilization, calcium modulation, antioxidation and immunomodulation. Obesity is associated with a higher risk of metabolic and cardiovascular diseases, cancer and other clinical conditions. Ingestion of taurine has been shown to alleviate metabolic diseases such as hyperlipidemia, diabetes, hypertension and obesity in animal models. Synthetic activity and concentration of taurine in adipose tissues and plasma have been shown to decrease in humans and animals during the development of obesity, suggesting a relationship between taurine deficiency and obesity.16
Acknowledgements
None.
Conflict of interest
The author declares no conflict of interest.
References
- Haslam DW, James WP. Obesity. Lancet. 2005;366(9492):1197–1209.
- Ghandforoush–Sattari M, Mashayekhi S. Evaluation of taurine as a biomarker of liver damage in paracetamol poisoning. Eur J Pharmacol. 2008;581(1–2):171–176.
- Huxtable RJ. Physiological actions of taurine. Physiol Rev. 1992;72(1):101–163.
- Oja SS, Saransaari P. Pharmacology of taurine. Proc West Pharmacol Soc. 2007;50:8–15.
- Harada H, Kitazaki K, Tsujino T, et al. Oral taurine supplementation prevents the development of ethanol–induced hypertension in rats. Hypertens Res. 2000;23(3):277–284.
- Huang KH, Chang CC, Ho JD, et al. Role of taurine on acid secretion in the rat stomach. J Biomed Sci. 2011;18:11.
- Son M, Kim HK, Kim WB, et al. Protective effect of taurine on indomethacin–induced gastric mucosal injury. Adv Exp Med Biol. 1996;403:147–155.
- Kim HM, Do CH, Lee DH. Characterization of taurine as anti–obesity agent in C. elegans. J Biomed Sci. 2010;17(Suppl 1):S33.
- Obinata K, Maruyama T, Hayashi M, et al. Effect of taurine on the fatty liver of children with simple obesity. Adv Exp Med Biol. 1996;403:607–613.
- Tastesen HS, Keenan AH, Madsen L, et al. Scallop protein with endogenous high taurine and glycine content prevents high–fat, high–sucrose–induced obesity and improves plasma lipid profile in male C57BL/6J mice. Amino Acids. 2014;46(7):1659–1671.
- You JS, Zhao X, Kim SH, et al. Positive correlation between serum taurine and adiponectin levels in high–fat diet–induced obesity rats. Adv Exp Med Biol. 2013;776:105–111.
- Tsuboyama–Kasaoka N, Shozawa C, Sano K, et al. Taurine (2–aminoethanesulfonic acid) deficiency creates a vicious circle promoting obesity. Endocrinology. 2006;147(7):3276–3284.
- Lin S, Hirai S, Yamaguchi Y, et al. Taurine improves obesity–induced inflammatory responses and modulates the unbalanced phenotype of adipose tissue macrophages. Mol Nutr Food Res. 2013;57(12):2155–2165.
- Cao PJ, Jin YJ, Li ME, et al. PGC–1a may associated with the anti–obesity effect of taurine on rats induced by arcuate nucleus lesion. Nutr Neurosci. 2016;19(2):86–93.
- Ditchfield AM, Desforges M, Mills TA, et al. Maternal obesity is associated with a reduction in placental taurine transporter activity. Int J Obes (Lond). 2015;39(4):557–564.
- Murakami S. Role of taurine in the pathogenesis of obesity. Mol Nutr Food Res. 2015;59(7):1353–1363.
©2015 Sattari, et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and build upon your work non-commercially.