Taurine protects against early and late skeletal muscle dysfunction secondary to ischaemia reperfusion injury

Objective: To assess the efficacy of the cytoprotective B-amino acid taurin e in prevention of skeletal muscle dysfunction secondary to ischaemia-reper fusion (IR) injury. Design: Randomised controlled animal study. Setting: Biomedical research laboratory, teaching hospital, Republic of Ire land. Animals: 96 Sprague Dawley rats. Interventions: Rats were randomised into three groups (n = 24/group): contr ol (sham); ischaemia-reperfusion (untreated); and ischaemia-reperfusion + t aurine. A further 24 rats were given taurine alone. The rat cremaster skele tal muscle model of four hours of ischaemia followed by reperfusion was use d. Taurine 4%wt/vol was given in the animals' water throughout the experime nt, beginning 48 hours before the ischaemia was initiated. Outcome measures: 8 rats were killed from each group and muscle contractile function was assessed using electrical field stimulation in a tissue bath at 24 hrs, 48 hrs and 7 days. Results: Ischaemia followed by 24 hours, 48 hours or 7 days of reperfusion resulted in significant reduction in both muscle twitch and tetanic contrac tile function (p < 0.05). This was reversed by taurine, which resulted in s ignificant preservation of twitch and tetanic contractility at all time pai nts including one week of reperfusion (p < 0.05). There was no difference i n muscle function between muscle treated with taurine after ischaemia-reper fusion and control muscle, with the same operation but without ischaemia, f rom 48 hours onwards. Conclusions: These data show that pharmaceutical use of the endogenous amin o acid taurine, unlike many other agents, protects electrophysiological Fun ction in skeletal muscle against both early and late ischaemia-reperfusion injury.