1999 paper : 'Fish odor' case due to dimethylglycine

from 1999 :

This paper tells of a man(38) who smelt of a fish odor since 5, and was negative for TMAU. He was finally diagnosed as having too much dimethylglycine in his blood. A DNA test seemed to confirm a mutant homozygous gene for the Dimethylglycine dehydrogenase enzyme. He also complained of muscle fatigue.

In this case, choline is to be avoided because it is metabolized in the body to dimethyglycine. Its not to do with gut bacteria. Betaine is also to be avoided, as can be seen in the graph. Possibly most of our betaine is derived from choline breakdown.

For this enzyme, B2 is the co-factor, and folate could also be implicated.

A main point is that his FMO3 enzyme seemed to be fine, and he even done well for (low) TMA levels after eating fish. This may be a test worth doing if you feel it could be an issue.

Pubmed abstract : http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10102904
full paper : http://www.clinchem.org/cgi/content/full/45/4/459

This subject may be returned to in the next few days, for elaboration and in case of errors