Myocardial failure in cats associated with low plasma taurine: a reversible cardiomyopathy

Pion and colleagues discovered that dilated cardiomyopathy, then a common and usually fatal heart disease in cats, was frequently caused by deficiency of the amino acid taurine, which cats cannot synthesize adequately and must obtain from animal-based diets. They found that affected cats had low plasma taurine and that supplementing taurine reversed the heart muscle failure in many cases. The finding prompted pet food manufacturers to increase taurine in commercial cat foods, after which the incidence of taurine-deficiency dilated cardiomyopathy fell dramatically. This landmark work demonstrated the cat's strict carnivorous nutritional requirements, transformed feline cardiac medicine, and stands as a classic example of how identifying a nutritional cause of disease can lead to prevention on a population scale through dietary reformulation.