Taurine against wrinkles

Human skin was suggested to rejuvenate with taurine

Polina Loseva, N+1

The basis of age-related wrinkling of the skin may be the drying out of cells. To resist it, scientists have proposed using osmolites – substances that increase osmotic pressure in the cell so that water rushes inside. One of these osmolytes, for example, can serve as taurine. The work was published in the journal Aging Cell (Foster et al., Osmolyte transporter expression is reduced in photoaged human skin: Implications for skin hydration in aging).

The skin is one of those organs on which age is most noticeable. It ages simultaneously from the outside – under the influence of ultraviolet rays and temperature changes – and from the inside, when its individual cells age and the fibers of the intercellular substance are destroyed.

One of the signs of skin aging is drying out. The cells of the epidermis are also more susceptible to it than any other cells of the body, because water is constantly leaving them into the external environment. However, it is still unclear exactly how they resist moisture loss.

It is known how the cells of other organs that are faced with a pressure drop cope with this, for example, the kidneys. They produce organic osmolites – for example, betaine, myoinositol and taurine. When the water leaves the cell, their production increases, they increase the osmotic pressure in the cells, and the water rushes back inside. If the cell is inflated, then osmolites come out through the transporter proteins in the membrane, and water rushes after them.

April Foster from the Manchester Academic Center for Health Sciences and her colleagues studied how osmotic pressure regulation works in aging human skin. To do this, they collected samples of two types of skin from healthy young and elderly volunteers: exposed to light – from the forearm – and not in contact with light – from the buttocks.

The researchers found that the cells in the young skin are larger (p<0.001) than in the old one – regardless of whether it was exposed to light or not. In addition, in the old skin from the forearm, the cell diameter was smaller than in the skin from the buttocks (p=0.035).

They then measured the number of osmolite transporters in different skin types. It turned out that their number changes under the influence of light: for example, there was less of a transporter for taurine in the old skin of the forearm than in the young (p<0.001), and also less in the old skin of the forearm than in the old skin of the buttocks (p=0.011).

To check whether this change in expression is due to the action of ultraviolet light, scientists shone a lamp simulating bright sunlight on the skin of the buttocks of healthy volunteers. Three days after the procedure, a biopsy was taken from them and it was found that the expression of transporters became lower, including the transporter for taurine (p=0.0054).

The authors of the work suggested that the addition of osmolytes can help cells to tolerate drying more easily. They conducted an experiment on a laboratory culture of keratinocytes – surface skin cells that were taken from the buttocks of healthy donors. They were subjected to hyperosmotic stress, that is, they were placed in an environment with high osmotic pressure.

The cells of young donors shrank to 75 percent of the volume. After adding water, they reached 88 percent of the initial volume, and in the presence of osmolites – up to 92 percent. The cells of old donors also shrank under the influence of stress, and then recovered to 84 percent from water and to 86-89 percent in the presence of osmolytes. In addition, in the presence of taurine, they did it significantly faster (p=0.0485).

Based on their data, the researchers concluded that skin aging is also associated with the loss of expression of osmolytic transporter proteins, which is enhanced by ultraviolet rays. Therefore, one of the possible strategies to combat skin aging, at least in terms of drying and wrinkling, may be the addition of osmolytes from the outside, for example, taurine.

Recently, scientists have tried another way to rejuvenate the skin – with the help of rapamycin, a candidate for "old age pills".

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