Effect of long-term feeding of taurine in hereditary hyperglycemic obese mice.

1) Feeding of 5% taurine diet for 14 weeks caused marked reduction of the body weight increase in young mice of a hereditary hyperglycemic obese strain (KK). Exchange of the diet for control accelerated gain of the body weight in these animals for the subsequent 6 weeks. 2) Adult KK mice fed 5% taurine diet for 10 weeks demonstrated a slight but significant decrease of the initial body weight, mainly due to a reduction of the size of the abdominal fat pads, whereas such effects of long-term feeding of taurine were not observed in adult lean (BALB/C) and experimentally obese (GTG) mice. 3) Suppression of development of obesity was also produced in young KK mice by adding taurine to tap water in 1.0 and 0.5% for 20 weeks. The abdominal fat pads were decreased markedly in size at the high dose of taurine, as compared to those of controls. There was no difference in blood sugar and liver cholesterol between the treated and untreated groups. The long-term feeding of taurine did not cause any change in the fatty acid composition of lipid in the abdominal fat pads, but this treatment served to liver lipid pattern of composition similar to that from BALB/C mice. 4) Whole body macroautoradiography demonstrated that administered taurine-S35 was accumulated largely in the liver, gall bladder, gastrointestinal walls, kidney and spleen. There was no significant difference in distribution pattern of taurine-S35 between KK and BALB/C mice.