Tributyrin
chemical compound
Tributyrin, also known as glyceryl tributyrate, is a triglyceride (fat) naturally present in butter. It is an ester composed of three butyric acid (butyrate) moieties and glycerol. It can be described as a liquid fat with an acrid taste. About 3 to 4% of butter is tributyrin, with butter being the richest known food source of tributyrin. It is a slowly converted precursor or prodrug of the short-chain fatty acid (SCFA) butyric acid, which is a major product of gut bacteria and hence "postbiotic".
Pharmacology
Tributyrin is a precursor or prodrug of the endogenous short-chain fatty acid (SCFA) butyric acid (butyrate). It is stable and is rapidly absorbed and gradually converted into butyric acid. Tributyrin is not broken down by gastric juice and is slowly converted into butyric acid and glycerol by pancreatic lipases in the gut. In addition, tributyrin is more lipophilic than butyric acid and is taken up into cells much more readily in comparison. Butyric acid itself has an extremely short elimination half-life of seconds to minutes among other limitations, which makes its own use impractical.
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This entry incorporates text from “Tributyrin” 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.