A substance our own bodies make may help keep aging immune cells from sounding the alarm too easily

As people age, a low-level inflammation often simmers in the body long after it is useful, and it is linked to poorer health in later life. A Yale-led team, headed by Vishwa Deep Dixit, has traced part of that simmer to taurine — a substance the body makes naturally — and to what happens to it inside macrophages, the immune cells that act as first responders. The study, published in Cell, combined human blood samples with experiments in cells and mice. It overturned an easy assumption: people aged 60 to 99 actually had more taurine in their blood than people aged 20 to 40. The important place turned out to be inside the cells. When macrophages met a danger signal, they released as much as 80% of their taurine — and with less taurine inside, an internal alarm assembly called the NLRP3 inflammasome became easier to set off. Restoring taurine inside the cells calmed that response. This does not show that taurine supplements prevent age-related disease in people, and the researchers are clear that human treatments are a long way off. What it does give aging research is a precise new place to look: not how much taurine is in the blood, but whether it stays where immune cells need it.

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