Does taurine work against ageing?

Taurine is a substance that occurs naturally in the body and that demonstrably declines as humans, mice and monkeys grow older. This decline has been consistently observed across multiple species (PMID 37289866). In humans, lower blood taurine levels are associated with more age-related conditions, although this is an association and not proof of causality. It is also notable that physical exercise temporarily raises taurine levels, which could help explain why movement is good for health.

In animal experiments, particularly in mice and monkeys, taurine supplementation produced impressive results: a longer healthy lifespan (healthspan), and in mice also a longer total lifespan. At the cellular level, multiple ageing mechanisms were slowed: less cellular ageing (senescence), less mitochondrial dysfunction, less DNA damage and less chronic low-grade inflammation (inflammaging) (PMID 37289866). This makes the biological plausibility strong.

However, there are as yet no clinical trials in humans demonstrating that taurine supplementation slows ageing or extends lifespan. The researchers behind the largest overview (PMID 37289866) state this explicitly. All human data are at this point observational or associative. A theoretical framework describes taurine as a kind of 'conditional vitamin': when levels are deficient, the body switches to survival mode at the expense of maintenance and protection, but this remains a hypothesis (PMID 30322941).

The situation in humans also contains a complicating finding: older adults with chronic conditions actually showed higher taurine production in the body, and higher production was associated with poorer cognitive performance (PMID 39423760). This most likely represents a compensatory response by the body to illness, and it is not evidence that taurine itself is harmful, but it does show that the relationship between taurine and ageing in humans is more complex than in animals. Caution in translating animal results to humans is therefore warranted.

In the field of Alzheimer's disease, it was discovered that the taurine transporter (SLC6A6) in cells of Alzheimer's patients was almost three times less active than in healthy peers (PMID 40631607). This is an interesting indication, but clinical evidence on supplementation is lacking. In summary: the evidence from animal models is reasonably strong and mechanistically supported, but for humans, definitive evidence from randomised trials is still absent.