| Objective: At present, studies on diabetes mellitus (DM) are more and more focused on how to delay the episode of DM and how to prevent or therapy kinds of complication of DM, besides manufacturing new medicine and dedicating to improve the effect of clinical therapy. While some functional foods are gradually becoming the searching focus of preventive medicine, because they are cheap, abundant in foods and have many biological effects without ill effect. Taurine (Tau), chemically named 2-aminoethanesulfonic acid, is an important sulfur-containing amino acid that is widely distributed in various mammal tissues. Since it was discovered by Hayes in 1975, many experimental studies and clinical applications have suggested it has important physiological action and have beneficial effects on antitumor, antisenium, adjusting immunity and preventing or curing hepatopathy and nephrosis. Although the investigations on Taurine' preventive or therapeutic on.DM or its complications have achieved great progress, few study on its effects on diabetic nephropathy is undertaken and its mechanism is not clear. On the basis of the previous investigations, we examined the preventive or therapeutic effects and possible chemopreventive mechanism of taurine on streptozotocin (STZ)-induced diabetic nephropathy inrats in order to explore the perspective on clinical application.Methods: Male Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats weighing 250~350g, were acclimatized for 1 week prior to being divided randomly according to weight into control group (12) and experimental group (48). DM was induced by a single caudal vein injection of STZ (50mg/kg-bw) while the control group animal was injected equivalent citrate buffer and fed a standard rat chow diet. Diabetes was defined as fasting plasma glucose greater than ll.lmmol/L in caudal vein blood and rats have the symptoms of polyuria, polyphagia, and emaciation. Then all the DM rats were divided randomly according to plasma glucose into the following group: (1) DM group: diabetic group with 12-week duration of diabetes fed a standard rat chow diet; (2) l%Tau group: diabetic group with 12-week duration of diabetes fed the above-mentioned diet containing 1% taurine; (3) 2%Tau group: diabetic group with 12-week duration of diabetes fed the above-mentioned diet containing 2% taurine; and (4) 3%Tau group: diabetic group with 12-week duration of diabetes fed the above-mentioned diet containing 3% taurine. Food and water were given ad libitum to all animals. Monitoring the weight of all rats every week during the test and the following indexes were examined at the end of 5th week: 24h urine volume, UTP, Cre, BUN, TC, LDL-C, TG. At the end of the test, rats from each group were killed by bleeding the femoral artery and the serum insulin, Cre, BUN, TC, LDL-C, TG, MDA, UTP and the activity of SOD and GSH-Px were examined. Recorded the weight of spleen, thymus, liver, kidney, and the tissue changes of their kidneys and pancreases were observed by microscope.Results: (1) Animal weight: Since the second week, the weight of control group rats began to increase by 13~23g every week. While the weight of DM group rats began to decrease since 1st week but the difference is insignificant. The weight of all the other three experimental group rats began to decrease first and increase since the metaphase, but the difference at different phase is insignificant. (2) Blood sugar and serum insulin: The blood sugar of control group rats is significantly lower than all the other groups at the beginning of test or at the end of 5th week. At the end of the test, the blood sugar of all the three Tau group is significantly lower than that of the DM group, but still is significantly higher than that of the control group. On the other hand, the insulin in serum of DM group is significantly lower than control group, though only 3%Tau can increase the serum insulin and the content of insulin in serum of 3%Tau group is already no lower than the control group. (3) Organ/body ratio: At the end of the test, the organ/body ratio of the live...
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