--- In morelife@yahoogroups.com, Max Peto <maximus.peto@...> wrote:
>
> I was doing a little reading today about citrulline. I haven't yet
> concluded if these two articles suggest that citrulline intake should
> be avoided, or if perhaps arginine is modified to citrulline and
> arginine is the ultimate cause. Still, these two abstracts make me
> question the idea of deliberately consuming extra citrulline. These two
> articles suggest that citrulline may modify synovial fluid proteins,
> and these proteins then provoke an immune-response, which may be part
> of the cause of Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA). The second article is a
> review on this topic.
>
> PMID: 11665966 - Specific presence of intracellular citrullinated
> proteins in rheumatoid arthritis synovium: relevance to antifilaggrin
> autoantibodies.
>
> PMID: 15574347 - Citrullinated proteins in rheumatoid arthritis.

[Max's message subject relates to our usage of citrulline, shown in
our separate supplement regimens as one of the "Meal Cocktail"
ingredients - http://morelife.org/personal/health/his-regimen.html
and http://morelife.org/personal/health/her-regimen.html

Our explanation for substituting it for arginine was part of the
Changes for 4/30/08 thru 6/30/08 -
http://morelife.org/personal/health/his-regimen_changes.html
- http://pmid.us/17662090 **Kitty]

Citrulline is not one of the amino acids which can be formed into
proteins by gene expression, whereas arginine is formed into proteins
by gene expression. Therefore the only method of formation of
citrullinated proteins is as quoted from the second abstract:
"Citrullinated proteins that are produced by enzymatic deimination of
arginine residues in proteins".

For this reason, consumption of citrulline will have no more effect on
the occurrence of citrullinated proteins than would consumption of
arginine or ornithine (both of which are interconvertible which
citrulline through the urea cycle). (Actually this is no effect at all
since the amount of arginine formed into proteins is highly unrelated
to the amount of arginine consumed in the diet.) Therefore, I see no
evidence against consuming citrulline based on these papers about the
relationship of citrullinated proteins to rheumatoid arthritis.

--Paul