Taurine and the Brain

This article briefly describes the trophic actions of taurine in the developing brain, contribution of taurine to the volume regulation of brain cells, and the interference of taurine with the synaptic amino acid receptors. Finally the possible use of taurine as a drug is discussed in various pathological states of the brain.When we searched material for this review, we got almost 4000 articles from the PubMed when using the terms “taurine and brain.” It is impossible to review all these articles. We must only select some items from this plethora. A few years ago, several exhaustive reviews have appeared on this topic. The readers are referred to them and their references for more detailed information of the earlier studies (Oja and Kontro, Taurine. In: Lajtha A (ed) Handbook of neurochemistry, vol 3, 2nd edn. Plenum Press, New York, pp 501–533, 1983; Huxtable, Taurine and the oxidative metabolism of cysteine. Biochemistry of sulfur. Plenum Press, New York, pp 121–198, 1986; Prog Neurobiol 32:471–533, 1989; Physiol Rev 72:101–163, 1992; Sturman, Physiol Rev 73:119–147, 1993; Oja and Saransaari, Taurine. In: Lajtha A, Oja SS, Saransaari P, Schousboe A (eds) Handbook of neurochemistry and molecular neurobiology. Amino acids and peptides in the nervous system, vol 3, 3rd edn. Springer, Berlin, pp 155–206, 2007; Saransaari and Oja, Taurine in neurotransmission. In: Lajtha A, Vizi ES (eds) Handbook of neurochemistry and molecular neurobiology. Neurotransmitter systems, vol 6, 3rd edn. Springer, Berlin, pp 155–206, 2008). We now focus mainly on more recent articles published during the few last years.