pH-lactate dissociation during anoxic insult: taurine effect.

Taurine, a sulfur amino acid abundant in brain of the fetus and early day neonate, has been postulated to play a major role in mediating the immature brain's unusually high buffering ability for lactic acidosis reported previously. In this study, we directly investigated this 'taurine effect' using a 10-day-old rat pup model and multinuclear (31P and 1H) nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) in-vivo spectroscopy. Brain of taurine-supplemented pups exhibited significantly higher acid buffering ability against lactic acidosis than age-matched control pups. The study supports the hypothesis that high levels of free cytosolic taurine increase the brain's ability to buffer against lactic acidosis.