Could a simple diet change prevent a heart attack? A Mount A prof is using fish to find out

A New Brunswick biochemist says fish and humans have something in common — and it could change how we look at promoting heart health. 

Tyson MacCormack, a professor in chemistry and biochemistry at Mount Allison University, says his research shows an amino acid called taurine plays a critical role in helping fish endure extreme conditions. 

He discovered this while studying cuttlefish in Portugal and found they have a lot of taurine in their bloodstreams and hearts.  

“When we looked into what it was doing in cuttlefish, we recognized that it was actually a really potent regulator of heart function,” said MacCormack.

“We found that taurine was protecting cuttlefish hearts from things like high calcium levels, which would be toxic to human hearts, and it allowed them to regulate the volume of their heart muscle … that’s really important in facilitating the pumping of blood.” 

Humans have smaller amounts of taurine in their hearts, which is found in their diets from eating fish and red meat. So, MacCormack wondered how this discovery might be applied to human heart health.  

He brought that knowledge back to his lab in Sackville and began testing on New Brunswick-native fish, such as brook trout. MacCormack manipulates their diet and monitors their heart rate with the help of swim tunnel respirometers.

Kind of like a treadmill, fish are placed inside a tank where water flow can be manipulated to make them swim at different speeds. The fish’s oxygen consumption is then tracked. 

“We're experimentally manipulating the concentration of taurine in their hearts to figure out why it's important to function,” said MacCormack.

“It's becoming apparent that a small change in diet that has an effect on how taurine gets into your heart can change the capacity of your heart to deal with stress.” 

He said taurine is pumped up to the human heart with the help of a specific protein, which is responsible for moving other amino acids into the heart. 

“The interesting thing about this is that if you increase the amount of those other amino acids that you're taking in your diet, you can block taurine influx into your heart,” said MacCormack. 

He said this research is leading his team to understand that even small changes in a human’s diet, with a focus on adjusting protein and amino acid intake, can either predispose someone to a heart attack or help to mitigate one. 

MacCormack said the goal is to create a nutritional guideline to help people ensure their diet is helping their heart and to create a supplement pill for people who can’t get taurine from their diets.