High dietary taurine and feline reproduction.

Abstract

Taurine is now well established as an essential nutrient for cats and may also be a conditionally essential nutrient for some other species, especially during development (Sturman, 1988). There is now a large body of literature dealing with the effects of taurine deficiency (Hayes, 1988; Sturman, 1988; Hayes and Trautwein, 1989; Sturman, 1990). Little attention has been paid to potential effects of taurine supplementation, however. In humans and cynamolgus monkeys which conjugate bile acids with taurine and glycine, the proportion of bile acids conjugated with taurine increases as the amount of taurine in the diet is increased (Sjovall, 1960; Haslewood, 1967; Hofmann and Small, 1967; Schersten, 1971; Sturman et al., 1975; Hayes et al., 1980). Such changes influence absorption from the gut, and beneficial effects of dietary taurine supplementation have been reported in chronic and acute hepatitis (Matsuyama et al., 1983; Nakashima et al., 1983), drug-induced liver disease (Attili et al., 1984), cirrhosis (Kroll and Lund, 1966), myotonia (Durelli et al., 1983), cystic fibrosis (Darling et al., 1985; Belli et al., 1987; Colombo et al., 1988; Thompson, 1988) and epilepsy (Barbeau and Donaldson, 1973; Barbeau and Donaldson, 1974; Bergamini et al., 1974; Fukuyama and Ochiai, 1982) although not in retinitis pigmentosa (Reccia et al., 1980). In addition, taurine has been added to commercial infant formulas and pediatric parenteral solutions in recent years because of mounting evidence of subtle abnormalities in visual function resulting from its absence (Sturman, 1986). A recent study reported adverse effects in the guinea pig comprising of fatty changes in the liver accompanied by changes in the lipid content after 14 days of oral administration of taurine (Cantafora et al., 1986).