Bile salts are known to be essential for the effective absorption of fat from the intestinal tract (1). They have been shown to stimulate the action of pancreatic lipase (2) and have an important emulsifying action on water-insoluble dietary triglycerides that is probably related to their ability to form micelles with fatty acids and monoglycerides (3). In addition to their role in triglyceride...

This study analyzes the occurrence of bile salt hydrolase in fourteen strains belonging to the genus Bifidobacterium. Deconjugation activity was detected using a plate test, two-step enzymatic reaction and activity staining on a native polyacrylamide gel. Subsequently, bile salt hydrolases from B. pseudocatenulatum and B. longum subsp. suis were purified using a two-step chromatographic procedu...

The objective of this study was to investigate the potential of liposomes containing bile salts as an ophthalmic delivery system for tacrolimus to improve corneal permeability. Liposomes containing bile salts, including sodium taurocholate, sodium deoxycholate, and sodium glycocholate, were produced by the thin-film dispersion method with a particle size of approximately 100 nm and an entrapmen...

The accumulation of toxic bile salts within the hepatocyte plays a key role in organ injury during liver disease. Deoxycholate (DC) and glycochenodeoxycholate (GCDC) induce apoptosis in vitro and in vivo, perhaps through direct perturbation of mitochondrial membrane structure and function. In contrast, ursodeoxycholate (UDC) and its taurine-conjugated form (TUDC) appear to be protective. We sho...

Taurine exists free in the organs of many animals (14) and also in combined form, as in the bile salts. The composition of bile salts from over 100 animal species was recently reported, and taurine was the most commonly occurring conjugate (5). The large amount of taurine present in certain tissues seems to be in excess of the amount needed for the formation of bile salts. Moreover, taurine is ...

The efflux transporter responsible for the canalicular elimination of bile salts from the hepatocytes is the bile salt export pump (BSEP, ABCB11). Absence or inhibition of this transporter leads to bile salt retention in the hepatocyte and in turn can lead to cholestatic liver disease. We expressed the BSEP/Bsep protein from three species (human, rat, and mouse) in a baculovirus-infected Sf9 sy...

A new stable isotope procedure has been developed and validated in rats, applying [1-(13)C]acetate infusion to quantify the production of bile salts from de novo synthesized cholesterol making use of the mass isotopomer distribution analysis (MIDA) principle. Ions (m/z) 458-461, 370-373 and 285-288 were monitored by GC/MS (EI-mode) for the methyl trimethylsilylether derivatives of cholate, chen...

INTRODUCTION Bile is a multi-functional fluid that acts both as a detergent to aid lipid digestion, and as an excretory fluid for substances that cannot be eliminated by urine (Hofmann, 1999). Bile salts, which are a key constituent of bile, are steroidal compounds with a characteristic fused four-carbon-ring skeleton often found conjugated with glycine, taurine, cysteine or sulphate groups (Go...