Singh et al. 2023 — taurine deficiency as a driver of aging
TL;DR
High-dose taurine begun at 14 months extended median lifespan by 10–12% in male and female C57BL/6J mice and improved numerous mouse healthspan measures. A six-month intervention in five aged female rhesus macaques per group improved several surrogate health measures. The human arms were observational: a cross-sectional taurine-versus-age plot, mixed-direction EPIC-Norfolk clinical associations, and acute exercise responses. No human participant received taurine, and no human DNA-methylation endpoint was measured.
Design
| Arm | Design |
|---|---|
| Mouse lifespan | C57BL/6J, taurine 1,000 mg/kg/day by oral gavage from 14 months; females n=60 taurine/n=62 control; males n=60/n=64 |
| Mouse healthspan | 500 or 1,000 mg/kg/day from 14 months; functional and tissue endpoints at later ages |
| Rhesus healthspan | Female macaques, 15 ± 1.5 years, taurine 250 mg/kg/day for six months; n=5/group for the reported healthspan panels |
| Human age association | Cross-sectional serum taurine across different source populations and ages, ending around age 60 |
| Human clinical associations | EPIC-Norfolk untargeted metabolomics, n=11,966; observational associations with >50 traits |
Key results
- Mouse median lifespan increased 10–12% in both sexes; life expectancy at 28 months increased 18–25%.
- Mouse healthspan readouts included improvements in fat mass, bone, neuromuscular performance, glucose handling, behavior, gut transit, and blood-cell profiles.
- The small rhesus experiment reported improvements in bone density, fasting glucose, liver enzymes, blood-cell counts, and oxidative-damage markers.
- The human age plot reported >80% lower serum taurine in older versus young observations, but did not establish a within-person aging trajectory.
- EPIC-Norfolk associations were mixed: higher taurine tracked favorably with adiposity, glucose, diabetes, and inflammation measures, but unfavorably with several hepatic and lipid measures including AST, ApoB, LDL-C, total cholesterol, and triglycerides.
Methylation: mouse-only result
Figure 3J compared 2,045 age-related CpG sites in skeletal muscle, cerebral cortex, and liver from 4-month-old mice, 16-month-old vehicle-treated mice, and 16-month-old taurine-treated mice. Taurine-treated aged muscle and cortex clustered closer to young mice; liver did not. Figure 3K measured H3K9me3 and H3K27me3 in mouse liver, brown fat, and muscle and found tissue- and mark-specific changes rather than a uniform youthful shift.
These were neither human samples nor a validated mouse or human epigenetic-clock analysis. The paper therefore provides no human methylation-rejuvenation evidence. gap/needs-human-replication
Limitations
- The lifespan result comes from one research lineage and remains independently unreplicated. gap/needs-replication
- The rhesus healthspan experiment was very small and female-only.
- Human supplementation, methylation, frailty, mortality, and healthspan were not tested.
- The human age plot confounded age with source population and did not include a longitudinal adult-aging trajectory.
- Columbia University filed provisional patent applications listing the corresponding author as an inventor.