Cholic acid
main bile acid
Cholic acid, also known as 3α,7α,12α-trihydroxy-5β-cholan-24-oic acid is a primary bile acid that is insoluble in water (soluble in alcohol and acetic acid), it is a white crystalline substance. Salts of cholic acid are called cholates. Cholic acid, along with chenodeoxycholic acid, is one of the two major bile acids produced by the liver, where it is synthesized from cholesterol. These two major bile acids are roughly equal in concentration in humans. Derivatives are made from cholyl-CoA, which exchanges its CoA with either glycine, or taurine, yielding glycocholic and taurocholic acid, respectively.
Cholic acid downregulates cholesterol-7-α-hydroxylase (rate-limiting step in bile acid synthesis), and cholesterol does the opposite. This is why chenodeoxycholic acid, and not cholic acid, can be used to treat gallstones (because decreasing bile acid synthesis would supersaturate the stones even more).
Cholic acid and chenodeoxycholic acid are the most important human bile acids. Other species may synthesize different bile acids as their predominant primary bile acids.
Medical uses
Cholic acid, sold under the brand name Cholbam, is approved for use in the United States and is indicated as a treatment for children and adults with bile acid synthesis disorders due to single enzyme defects, and for peroxisomal disorders such as Zellweger syndrome.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q287415. The Library of Congress control number is sh85024655. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cholic acid” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.