Past Taurine Intake Has a Positive Effect on Present Cognitive Function in the Elderly

Abstract

This study investigated the associations between dietary history of past taurine intake and cognitive function in the elderly. Subjects of this study were 40 elderly persons with dementia (men 14, women 26) and 37 normal elderly persons (men 5, women 32). Data were collected using questionnaires by investigator-based interview to the elderly and family caregivers. We examined their general characteristics, anthropometric data, cognitive function, and taurine index. Cognitive function was measured using MMSE-DS and higher score means better cognitive function. As dietary history of past taurine intake, taurine index was evaluated by scoring the intake frequency of 41 kinds of taurine-containing foods. Part correlation analysis (sex, age, and school educational period correction) was used to analyze associations between taurine index and cognitive function. The analysis of all data was carried out by the SPSS 20.0 program for windows. The age, height, weight, and BMI of elderly with dementia showed no statistical significance compared to normal elderly. The elderly with dementia had significantly higher school education period (7.4 years) than the normal elderly (4.8 years) (p < 0.01). Nevertheless, the average total score of cognitive function (MMSE-DS) of the elderly with dementia (18.1 points) was significantly lower than score of the normal elderly (21.7 points) (p < 0.05). The average taurine index of the elderly with dementia (104.7 points) was significantly lower than average taurine index of the normal elderly (123.7 points) (p < 0.01). There were positive correlations between total taurine index and total score of cognitive function in all the elderly subjects (p < 0.05). In particular, as taurine index was higher, there were significantly higher scores of cognitive function such as 'time orientation' and 'judgement and abstract thinking' (p < 0.01). In conclusion, these results suggest that past taurine intake may have a positive effect on present cognitive function in the elderly.

Mitigation of aging-related plasticity decline through taurine supplementation and environmental enrichment

“…Taurine content declines with age, which in the brain was shown for the 27-month-old mouse hippocampus (Zhu et al, 2019) and cerebellum of 2-year-old rats (Suarez et al, 2016), and this has been correlated with cognitive de cits and age-associated diseases (Singh et al, 2023). Taurine supplementation, on the other hand, ameliorates age-related cognitive de cits like time orientation or judgment and abstract thinking (Bae et al, 2017), the performance of passive avoidance tasks, and cross-shaped water maze . Because taurine is a modulator of the GABAergic system (Idrissi and Trenkner 2004; Chen et al, 2029), whose function is impaired in the aging brain, contributing to E/I imbalance, we tested its ability to support plasticity.…”