Trimethylaminuria Pubmed paper 1997: A pharmacogenetic study of trimethylaminuria in Orientals

1997
A study of the metabolism of trimethylamine was carried out in 103 healthy Thai volunteers
Keypoints:
TMA-N-O/TMA ratio : trimemthylamine-n-oxide (good)/trimethylamine (smelly) ratio
84%: may be a mild 'fail' today.
TMA capsule test (600mg): Another TMAU paper suggests this as a urine 'carrier' test

This is posted as an anecdotal case. It is of interest partly because it is a new name carrying out the paper. He didn't test the normal volunteers with a challenge test and found their TMA-N-O/TMA ratio to be about 84%-100%. Today in a few (of the few) TMAU test labs, around 84% may be deemed borderline or even a very mild case (bearing in mind also it wasn't a challenge test). He then tested 5 'known' TMAU cases and found them to be around 8-35% (very low), and then used a TMA capsule challenge test (elsewhere TMA capsules are used as a 'carrier' challenge test) and found them to be even lower %s. With DNA testing, he found the 5 to be classic 'TMAU autosomal recessive' cases.

Thithapandha A.

Department of Pharmacology, Faculty of Science, Mahidol University, Bangkok, Thailand. amnuay@hotmail.com

A study of the metabolism of trimethylamine was carried out in 103 healthy Thai volunteers (70 men and 33 women) and it was found that under normal dietary conditions 84-100% of trimethylamine was excreted in the urine in its N-oxide form. Five propositi living in different parts of the country were identified as having deficiency in the N-oxidation of this tertiary amine, because they excreted only 8-35% of this chemical as trimethylamine N-oxide...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9429235