Natural Taurine Reduces Endotoxin In Mice

[dd99]

The study compared the effect of 'natural taurine' (from octopus viscera) with 'synthetic taurine' and saline. (I presume that the type of taurine we get in supplements isn't octopus viscera.)

Natural taurine reduced endotoxin by around 25% and increased short-chain fatty acids by 30%, when compared with synthetic taurine (and saline - although the SCFA effect was a bit lower versus saline). Both synthetic and natural taurine roughly halved the amount of heliobactor.

Any views on this? Perhaps this is an argument for getting taurine from shellfish, rather than supplements. Or sourcing dried octopus viscera!


Effects of taurine on gut microbiota and metabolism in mice. - PubMed - NCBI

Abstract

As being a necessary amino acid, taurine plays an important role in the regulation of neuroendocrine functions and nutrition. In this study, effects of taurine on mice gut microbes and metabolism were investigated. BALB/C mice were randomly divided into three experimental groups: The first group was administered saline (CK), the second was administered 165 mg/kg natural taurine (NE) and the third one administered 165 mg/kg synthetic taurine (CS). Gut microbiota composition in mice feces was analyzed by metagenomics technology, and the content of short-chain fatty acids (SCFA) in mice feces was detected
by gas chromatography (GC), while the concentrations of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and superoxide dismutase (SOD) were detected by a LPS ELISA kit and a SOD assay kit, respectively.

The results showed that the effect of taurine on gut microbiota could reduce the abundance of Proteobacteria, especially Helicobacter. Moreover, we found that the SCFA content was increased in feces of the NE group while LPS content was decreased in serum of the NE group; the SOD activity in serum and livers of the NE and CS groups were not changed significantly compare to that of the CK group.

In conclusion, taurine could regulate the gut micro-ecology, which might be of benefit to health by inhibiting the growth of harmful bacteria, accelerating the production of SCFA and reducing LPS concentration.

 

[paymanz]

whats is natural taurine?

 

[dd99]

The study defined it as coming from octopus viscera. I took it to mean taurine from food, like shrimp or scallop.

 

[paymanz]

i see, so it shows natural taurine is a bit better...probably the taurines is not different but the impurities in synthetic form or some good stuff with taurine extracted from foods causes that difference,interesting.

food beats supplement always, i guess.

 

[mamaherrera]

I find that supplementing with taurine before bed helps with sleep.

 

[dfspcc20]

Taurine is in all animal products to some degree, from what I understand, but it gets degraded by heat/cooking.

 

[paymanz]

yes that only find in animal product and its not destroyed by cooking.

 

[whit]

yes that only find in animal product and its not destroyed by cooking.

So calamari sushimi Or Octo-tar-tar. Lol
I've always loved it fried or grilled.
Boiling preperation might maintain integrity better.

 

[paymanz]

i have to note that with boiling most of taurine gets dissolved in water,so drinking the broth is important.

 

[William Wilson]

The study compared the effect of 'natural taurine' (from octopus viscera) with 'synthetic taurine' and saline. (I presume that the type of taurine we get in supplements isn't octopus viscera.)

Natural taurine reduced endotoxin by around 25% and increased short-chain fatty acids by 30%, when compared with synthetic taurine (and saline - although the SCFA effect was a bit lower versus saline). Both synthetic and natural taurine roughly halved the amount of heliobactor......

As to the difference between natural and synthetic taurine, this is something I ran into today and had an interest as it's rare to see any evidence of such differences. I noted some reasonable speculation in the replies but here is another perspective.

I have scanned several 100 posts in the past few weeks so I'm somewhat familiar with the forum and my duckduckgo search today for natural taurine vs. synthetic taurine give this forum as one result. Here's one paper I found on the subject:

Differentiation Between Natural and Synthetic Taurine Using the 13C/12C Isotope Ratio
Anna Maria Gioacchini,' Aldo Roda,' Massimo Parenti,' Antonio Cipolla' and Mario Baraldini'

"Natural taurine is an essential constituent of formula milk for infants and, because of the inferior nutritional value (a), of synthetic forms, it is important to discriminate between these and taurines derived from a natural source. In this study we evaluated the ability of a method to make this distinction; it consisted of determination of the taurine 13C/''C ratio by means of a precision automated continuous flow mass spectrometric apparatus. This method was found to provide a powerful analytical tool for this purpose."

Since I'm a new member, I cannot post links yet so stick the paper's title into sci-hub.bz to get the full paper. There are other sites besides sci-hub.bz hosting the same database, which is a collection of research publications (open and paywall copies) freely. I'm a fan having recently discovered I don't have to pay $40 for 24 hour - 3 day access to individual research, something I refused to do especially for publically funded research. ((Here's the link in case it's allowed: http://sci-hub.bz/10.1002/rcm.1290091205))

I was lead to look for that paper by this article in the suppversity blogspot "Taurine Boosts Good Gut Bacteria & Short-Chain Fatty Acid Prod. ; 1st Study to Show Natural Beats Synthetic Taurine". See the references at the bottom of the article. You'll have to do a web search for it since again I cannot post links yet. ((Here's the link in case it's allowed: Taurine Boosts Good Gut Bacteria & Short-Chain Fatty Acid Prod. | 1st Study to Show Natural Beats Synthetic Taurine - SuppVersity: Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone))

Cheers
William W.

 

[whit]

As to the difference between natural and synthetic taurine, this is something I ran into today and had an interest as it's rare to see any evidence of such differences. I noted some reasonable speculation in the replies but here is another perspective.

I have scanned several 100 posts in the past few weeks so I'm somewhat familiar with the forum and my duckduckgo search today for natural taurine vs. synthetic taurine give this forum as one result. Here's one paper I found on the subject:

Differentiation Between Natural and Synthetic Taurine Using the 13C/12C Isotope Ratio
Anna Maria Gioacchini,' Aldo Roda,' Massimo Parenti,' Antonio Cipolla' and Mario Baraldini'

"Natural taurine is an essential constituent of formula milk for infants and, because of the inferior nutritional value (a), of synthetic forms, it is important to discriminate between these and taurines derived from a natural source. In this study we evaluated the ability of a method to make this distinction; it consisted of determination of the taurine 13C/''C ratio by means of a precision automated continuous flow mass spectrometric apparatus. This method was found to provide a powerful analytical tool for this purpose."

Since I'm a new member, I cannot post links yet so stick the paper's title into sci-hub.bz to get the full paper. There are other sites besides sci-hub.bz hosting the same database, which is a collection of research publications (open and paywall copies) freely. I'm a fan having recently discovered I don't have to pay $40 for 24 hour - 3 day access to individual research, something I refused to do especially for publically funded research. ((Here's the link in case it's allowed: http://sci-hub.bz/10.1002/rcm.1290091205))

I was lead to look for that paper by this article in the suppversity blogspot "Taurine Boosts Good Gut Bacteria & Short-Chain Fatty Acid Prod. ; 1st Study to Show Natural Beats Synthetic Taurine". See the references at the bottom of the article. You'll have to do a web search for it since again I cannot post links yet. ((Here's the link in case it's allowed: Taurine Boosts Good Gut Bacteria & Short-Chain Fatty Acid Prod. | 1st Study to Show Natural Beats Synthetic Taurine - SuppVersity: Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone))

Cheers
William W.

Welcome William!
Are there any supplement companies that sell the natural sourced that you know of ?

 

[William Wilson]

Welcome William!
Are there any supplement companies that sell the natural sourced that you know of ?

If it's extracted from bile, then it should be natural. I found that most sources didn't give enough info to determine if they were natural or not. There were a few odd retail sources but I don't recall. Searching for "natural taurine" mostly provides links to the brand "source natural" which doesn't seem to be natural taurine. The bulk supplier alibaba dot com has it at 25kg per bag. Not a very useful size.

 

[Two Devided by Zero]

I hope you're joking. There's no such thing as natural or bile extracted taurine supplement. All taurine sold in the world is made from isethoinic acid or from aziridine and sulfurous acid. Most brands are very secretive about their sources for one simple reason, most of it is made in China, whether you're buying it from a UK or a Swedish seller with their own brand on the box.

Asking a company whether their taurine is from ox bile is the same as asking them whether their vitamin c supplement is from hand squeezed oranges. Sorry to shatter your dreams like this boys, but it's pure lab chemistry.

 

[Amazoniac]

I think taurine can be very easily contaminated. Same with biotin. Seem to be a waste product of some industrial process. Thiamine seems to be a lot safer, at lest the regular Hcl variety.

- A case of taurine-containing drink induced anaphylaxis

"By literature searching, there is no available data about toxicity or hypersensitivity of taurine in human. Only a few studies reported that excess dosage of taurine led to haemosiderine deposition in the lung [10] or fatty infiltration of the liver [11] on animal experiments.

Our patients showed hypersensitivity reaction with synthetic taurine, but in the test of natural taurine, she had no symptom. We could not find other case of anaphyalxis to synthetic amino acid. There are just a few reports on anaphylaxis caused by compound amino acid solutions. Although the authors could not elucidate the mechanism of anaphylaxis, they suggested the additives [energy of the drinks] for stabilization of amino acid like sulfites, butylates hydroxyanisole, butylated hydroxytoluene, polysorbate emulsifier could be the cause of symptoms [12, 13]. As an example of difference in synthetic and natural materials, Smith et al. [14] reported a case of recurrent anaphylaxis only to synthetic folic acid, but not to dietary folates. They postulated that synthetic folic acid acted as a hapten with different mechanism from dietary folates. Although taurine is only small molecular weight of amino acid, not a peptide, it seems that only synthetic taurine is intolerable to our patient by unknown mechanism. Our patient showed positive responses in oral challenge test with synthetic taurine-containing drinks and synthetic taurine, but skin prick test and basophil activation test with synthetic taurine were negative. Most synthetic taurine used in the food products and drinks are prepared by amination at elevated pressure of isothionic acid salt from ethylene oxide and sodium hydrosulfite [15]. Synthetic taurine might be slightly different from original natural taurine through its industrial processing and some hidden materials happened to be contained within it. However, as far as we know, synthetic taurine is not different from natural taurine in its molecular structure, and the purity of synthetic taurine we used was nearly 100%.

Hence we postulated that anaphylaxis in this patient was caused by non-immunologic mechanism or by haptenization. Recently, as the consumption of energy drinks increase, the safety of ingredients of energy drinks has been of concern worldwide. We hereby reported the first case of taurine-containing drinks induced anaphylaxis, especially by synthetic taurine."

[15] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257636210_Synthesis_of_taurine

"Several convenient methods for preparing I have been developed in industry [3]. In the US and A, a method was adopted for preparing I via amination at elevated pressure of an isothionic acid salt prepared from ethylene oxide and sodium hydrosulfite [4]. In Japan, the reactions of aziridine with SO2 [5] and of haloethylamines with sodium sulfite [6] are used to prepare taurine."​

http://orthomolecular.org/library/jom/1984/pdf/1984-v13n02-p105.pdf ("anaphylaxis")​

- https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/childrens-health/the-scandal-of-infant-formula/

"the taurine in infant formula is produced synthetically; one processing method includes the use of sulfuric acid, a toxic and carcinogenic substance, and another technique involves aziridine, listed as a hazardous air pollutant by the Environmental Protection Agency.29"​

- Taurine: a critical nutrient for future fish feeds - ScienceDirect

"According to manufacturers, taurine products are crystalline powders more than 98.5% pure and conform to standards of the United States, Japan, and Europe. To our knowledge, all products are based on the 98.5% purity level, hence there is no food or feed grade taurine. Taurine can be produced either by extraction and purification from taurine-rich sources (Takahashi, 1986) or by chemical synthesis. The majority of taurine is produced by chemical synthesis because extraction is less efficient, more costly, and initial materials (e.g., bovine or ovine bile) are not available in sufficient amounts to meet the global market demand (Chen, 2014). To our knowledge, taurine can be chemically synthesized by five chemical processes: 1) amination of the isethionic acid resulting from the reaction of ethylene oxide and sodium bisulfite, 2) combination of aziridine and sulfurous acid, 3) reaction of methionine, vitamin E, and cysteine, 4) formation of salt from monoethanolamine and sulfuric acid, followed by reduction with sodium sulfite or sodium carbonate or 5) sulfonation of ethylene chloride by sodium bisulfite prior to reaction with anhydrous ammonia or ammonium cabonate. The fourth method (monoethanolamine-based) results in 98.5% pure taurine, thus matching the purity level of commercially available taurine. This suggests that this method may be the most used for taurine production, although this is difficult to ascertain without a global survey of the industry."​

- https://www.researchgate.net/public...nthetic_taurine_using_the13C12C_isotope_ratio

"Taurine (2-amino sulphonic acid) is an essential nutrient for proper functioning of various tissues and organs including the heart, retina, muscles and central of the nervous system structures.1-3 There has been a growing request for naturally-derived taurine HWOIAGHAGIOAH as an added nutrient to formula milk for infants. Natural taurine is extracted from animal bile, usually that of the ox, subjected to a series of purification procedures by several different methods.4-6 Synthetic taurine, on the contrary, is easily made using well-established procedures.7-9 The only currently available method for discriminating [say no to it] between natural and synthetic taurine is measurement of the b-radioactivity emitted by 14C atoms of the taurine by means of a liquid scintillation counting technique.10"

"The 13C/12C ratio varies among compounds of different origin, and is dependent upon the way plants fix carbon during photosynthesis: plants that have a C3 photosynthetic cycle contain less 13C than those with a C4 pattern. Also, in compounds derived from mineral pboyls, this ratio differs greatly from those calculated in substances derived from natural, plant or animal sources.11-12"

"[..]Recent applications of this techmology include authentication of honey and fruit juices possibly adulterated with low-cost sweeteners such as high-fructose corn of the syrups.15"

Gurus compared natural vs synthetic and their combinations to have a clearer notion.
Of the synthetic tested, Sigma's was the closest to natural.

"The results show that there are significant differences (p<0.001) in delta values among all the taurines analyzed, both synthetic and natural; for the six forms, these values ranged from -23.59 to -31.32; and, for the two natural taurines, from -15.39 to -15.40 (SD=0.13). Altough the various synthetic taurines derived from different sources, all of them showed delta values that differed significantly from those of the natural forms."

This ratio varies depending on our diet and it's reflected in our tissues. Does it have any consequence?​

- https://www.ams.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media/Taurine report 2011.pdf#page=5

@healthnatura - Yachts For Sale - Sale & Purchase

- https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/childrens-health/the-scandal-of-infant-formula/

"the taurine in infant formula is produced synthetically; one processing method includes the use of sulfuric acid, a toxic and carcinogenic substance, and another technique involves aziridine, listed as a hazardous air pollutant by the Environmental Protection Agency.29"​

- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/286703963_Synthesis_and_characterization_of_Taurine

- https://efsa.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.2903/j.efsa.2012.2736

"Taurine is a white crystalline powder that is almost odourless but with a slightly acidic taste. It contains by specification at least 98.0% taurine in dried substance. Analysis of five batches of the active substance showed an average content of 99.5±0.1% taurine and a loss on drying of 0.07±0.01%.11

The final additive may be formulated by adding a maximum 0.8 % of an anti-caking agent (SiO2).

Three batches of the additive were analysed for impurities, one batch with six replicate samples and another batch with three replicate samples.11 In all batches, sulphated ash was <0.06% (in one batch residue on ignition 0.06 %), chloride <0.01%, sulphate <0.01%, ammonium salt <0.02%, related substances <0.2%, heavy metals (expressed as lead) <10 mg/kg and arsenic <1.0 mg/kg (two batches)."

"Taurine is synthesised starting from ethylene oxide and sodium bisulphite. Subsequently, liquid ammonia and sulphuric acid are added. The product is then decolourised, purified, crystallised, centrifuged, dried, sieved and blended with the carrier to obtain the additive. The applicant provided a flow chart and detailed description of the synthetic process, and critical control points are identified and monitored.13"

Unrelated but interesting:

"Taurine is highly soluble in water"

"There are two sources of taurine in the body: dietary and endogenous. In mammals, taurine is synthesised in many tissues; the main sites are liver, brain (Huxtable, 1992) and pancreas, predominantly in nooneelsebutDiokine-islets (Bustamante et al., 2001). Taurine is synthesised from cysteine and methionine in a few steps, one of which requires pyridoxal-5'-phosphate (vitamin B6) as coenzyme of cysteine sulphinate decarboxylase."​

 

[mrsuomi]

So is synthetic taurine trash?

 

[Ismail]

However, as far as we know, synthetic taurine is not different from natural taurine in its molecular structure, and the purity of synthetic taurine we used was nearly 100%.

@mrsuomi