Compound Monograph
Tyramine
Tyramine is a trace amine formed by decarboxylation of tyrosine — harmless in ordinary diets because intestinal and hepatic MAO-A destroys almost all of it, but the molecule behind the "cheese effect": on a monoamine-oxidase inhibitor the same dietary amine can trigger a hypertensive crisis. It occurs in aged and fermented foods and, in trace amounts, in several database herbs.
Sources · 17
Where Does It Come From?
Tyramine is a naturally occurring (and made in the body) trace amine (phenethylamine-derived biogenic amine), found in Broom, Common reed, Tick trefoil and 14 other sources. It is flagged as moderately toxic.
Principal source Broom Cytisus scoparius Herb monograph →
Source Acacia Acacia, Vachellia & Senegalia spp. Herb monograph →
Source San Pedro Echinopsis pachanoi Herb monograph →
Source Shepherd's Purse Capsella bursa-pastoris Herb monograph →
Source Tick Trefoil Desmodium spp. Herb monograph → Concentration
Content by Source
Concentrations not reported. No percent-dry-weight or mg/g figures have been published for this compound in its source plants.
Tyramine at a Glance
Tyramine is a trace amine — a simple biogenic amine made by removing the carboxyl group from the amino acid tyrosine. It occurs at low levels in the human body, is produced in quantity by the bacteria that ferment food, and turns up in trace amounts in a scattering of plants, including several herbs here.
On its own it is a nuisance molecule, not a medicine. It has no therapeutic use, and in a healthy person eating ordinary food it barely exists as a systemic drug at all: monoamine oxidase A (MAO-A) in the gut wall and liver destroys almost all of it before it reaches the circulation — in one 88-volunteer study, 76.8% of a 400 mg oral dose came back in urine as the MAO metabolite 4-hydroxyphenylacetic acid 13Reference 13Highly variable pharmacokinetics of tyramine in humans and polymorphisms in OCT1, CYP2D6, and MAO-AView study →.
That first-pass barrier is the whole story. Remove it — with a monoamine-oxidase inhibitor — and the same amine that a cheese sandwich delivers harmlessly becomes capable of a hypertensive crisis. This is the “cheese effect”, and it is the reason tyramine matters to a herbal database at all: the traditional contraindication between MAOI drugs and tyramine-bearing herbs rests entirely on this molecule.
The Cheese Effect
In the early 1960s, patients taking the first monoamine-oxidase-inhibitor antidepressants began presenting with sudden, severe headaches and blood-pressure spikes. The link to food — and specifically to aged cheese — was worked out and then demonstrated experimentally, establishing tyramine as the pressor agent responsible 2Reference 2Hypertensive interactions between monoamine oxidase inhibitors and foodstuffsView study →.
The mechanism is a removed safety margin rather than a new drug action:
- Normally, dietary tyramine is almost entirely deaminated by MAO-A in the intestinal mucosa and liver before it reaches the systemic circulation 5,
13Reference 5ReviewSelective inhibitors of monoamine oxidase type B and the “cheese effect”View study →Reference 13Highly variable pharmacokinetics of tyramine in humans and polymorphisms in OCT1, CYP2D6, and MAO-AView study → . What little gets through is cleared within minutes — the elimination half-life is roughly 0.5 hours 14Reference 14Tyramine pharmacokinetics and reduced bioavailability with foodView study →. - Under MAO inhibition, that barrier is gone. Tyramine reaches sympathetic nerve terminals intact, is taken up, and dumps stored noradrenaline into the synapse in one uncontrolled burst — the pressor response, and at the extreme, hypertensive crisis with headache, and in rare historical cases intracranial haemorrhage and death 3,
5Reference 3A reassessment of the safety profile of monoamine oxidase inhibitors: elucidating tired old tyramine mythsView study →Reference 5ReviewSelective inhibitors of monoamine oxidase type B and the “cheese effect”View study → .
Two things about this story are routinely got wrong.
First, it is a dose–response, not a switch. The blood-pressure rise is graded and proportional to how much tyramine gets through; there is no threshold below which nothing happens and above which crisis is certain 4Reference 4The prescriber’s guide to the MAOI diet — thinking through tyramine troublesView study →. Sensitivity also varies substantially between individuals, which is why a fixed food list is a poor substitute for judgement 3,
Second, the classic restricted-food lists are decades out of date. A review of more than 150 recent analyses found that changes in food production — defined starter cultures, hygiene regulation, shorter or better-controlled ripening — have cut tyramine sharply in most foods, and that even many “matured” cheeses are now safe in normal portions 3Reference 3A reassessment of the safety profile of monoamine oxidase inhibitors: elucidating tired old tyramine mythsView study →. Cheese was historically the only food associated with documented fatalities; the modern picture is a small number of genuinely risky items rather than a long list of forbidden ones 3,
How Tyramine Raises Blood Pressure
Tyramine is the textbook indirectly acting sympathomimetic. It does not activate adrenergic receptors itself. Instead it is a substrate for the noradrenaline transporter, enters the sympathetic nerve terminal, is taken up into synaptic vesicles by the vesicular monoamine transporter, and displaces stored noradrenaline, which then leaks out into the synapse by reverse transport. The vasoconstriction and rise in blood pressure are the released noradrenaline’s, not tyramine’s 7Reference 7The vascular effects of trace amines and amphetaminesView study →.
That has been the standard account for over fifty years, and for the systemic pressor response it holds. But it is not the complete mechanism, and the page should say so. Two developments complicate it:
- TAAR1 and the trace-amine receptors. In 2001 a family of G-protein-coupled receptors activated by tyramine, β-phenylethylamine, tryptamine and octopamine was cloned from human and rodent tissue — the trace amine-associated receptors 9,
10Reference 9Trace amines: identification of a family of mammalian G protein-coupled receptorsView study →Reference 10AnimalAmphetamine, 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine, lysergic acid diethylamide, and metabolites of the catecholamine neurotransmitters are agonists of a rat trace amine receptorView study → . Tyramine is one of the endogenous agonists at TAAR1, which is expressed in brain monoaminergic regions and in peripheral tissues including blood vessels 7,11Reference 7The vascular effects of trace amines and amphetaminesView study →Reference 11Pharmacology of human trace amine-associated receptors: therapeutic opportunities and challengesView study → . This gives trace amines a receptor of their own rather than a purely borrowed pharmacology. - Direct vascular constriction. In isolated porcine coronary artery, p-tyramine caused concentration-dependent vasoconstriction that was unaffected by endothelium removal or by adrenoceptor, histamine, dopamine or 5-HT receptor antagonists — i.e. in that preparation it was not acting indirectly at all, and the authors attributed the effect to phenylethylamine-specific (TAAR-like) receptors 8Reference 8Dietary trace amine-dependent vasoconstriction in porcine coronary arteryView study →.
The honest summary: the clinically important pressor response — the one MAOI patients are warned about — is the classical indirect noradrenaline-release mechanism, and that is what the human challenge data track. A direct TAAR-mediated vascular component is real in vitro but its contribution in intact humans is unquantified 7,
The Tyramine Pressor Dose
Because tyramine’s effect is graded, the literature quantifies it with a pressor-dose challenge: give escalating oral or intravenous tyramine and find the dose that raises systolic blood pressure by a defined amount — conventionally 30 mmHg. Comparing that dose before and during a drug gives a clean multiplier for how much the drug potentiates dietary tyramine. This is the standard by which every MAO inhibitor’s dietary risk has been characterised 5,
The results separate the drug classes sharply:
| Drug / class | Effect on the oral tyramine pressor dose | Practical reading |
|---|---|---|
| Tranylcypromine (irreversible, non-selective) | 20–40× potentiation of oral tyramine 15, | Full dietary caution; the classic “MAOI diet” 4, |
| Phenelzine, isocarboxazid (irreversible, non-selective) | Same class effect; dietary restriction applies 4Reference 4The prescriber’s guide to the MAOI diet — thinking through tyramine troublesView study → | Full dietary caution |
| Oral selegiline, ≥20 mg/day | Pressor sensitivity clearly enhanced; MAO-B selectivity is lost at this dose 17Reference 17Tyramine kinetics and pressor sensitivity during monoamine oxidase inhibition by selegilineView study → | Treat as a non-selective MAOI |
| Moclobemide (reversible, MAO-A-selective) | ~4× left shift of the oral dose–pressor curve; ~10× less than tranylcypromine; no rise below 80 mg oral tyramine 15Reference 15Tyramine pressor effect in man: studies with moclobemide, a novel, reversible monoamine oxidase inhibitorView study → | Ingesting under ~100 mg tyramine unlikely to be clinically relevant 15Reference 15Tyramine pressor effect in man: studies with moclobemide, a novel, reversible monoamine oxidase inhibitorView study → |
| Rasagiline 0.5–2 mg/day (MAO-B-selective) | 50–75 mg tyramine challenges produced no clinically significant reactions in 110 Parkinson’s patients 20Reference 20Effects of tyramine administration in Parkinson’s disease patients treated with selective MAO-B inhibitor rasagilineView study → | No specific dietary tyramine restriction 20Reference 20Effects of tyramine administration in Parkinson’s disease patients treated with selective MAO-B inhibitor rasagilineView study → |
| Safinamide (MAO-B-selective) | No meaningful pressor potentiation in a randomised double-blind challenge 21Reference 21RCTThe effect of safinamide, a novel drug for Parkinson’s disease, on pressor response to oral tyramine: a randomized, double-blind, clinical trialView study → | No specific restriction |
| Selegiline transdermal 6 mg/24 h | ~400 mg of tyramine eaten as aged cheese produced no pressor effect at steady state 18, | Bypassing the gut preserves the intestinal MAO-A barrier 18Reference 18Effects of a tyramine-enriched meal on blood pressure response in healthy male volunteers treated with selegiline transdermal system 6 mg/24 hourView study → |
| Linezolid (antibiotic, weak reversible MAOI) | Modest potentiation of the intravenous tyramine pressor response 22Reference 22Effect of oral linezolid on the pressor response to intravenous tyramineView study → | Real but minor; the tyramine caution follows the MAOI property, not the drug class label |
Two structural lessons fall out of that table. Selectivity matters — MAO-A is the isoform that guards the gut, so selective MAO-B inhibition can be achieved without a cheese effect, while MAO-A inhibition (or non-selective inhibition) produces one 5,
Meals matter too, and by a surprising amount: the same 200 mg dose taken with food gives 53% lower systemic exposure and 72% lower peak concentration than taken fasted, because absorption is slowed and spread out across a working MAO-A barrier 14Reference 14Tyramine pharmacokinetics and reduced bioavailability with foodView study →. Roughly twice as much tyramine is needed with a meal to produce the same effect 14Reference 14Tyramine pharmacokinetics and reduced bioavailability with foodView study →.
Dietary Sources That Actually Matter
Tyramine in food is a microbial product: bacteria with tyrosine decarboxylase convert free tyrosine into tyramine during ripening, fermentation or spoilage. The amount therefore tracks proteolysis and microbial load, not the food category — which is exactly why category-level restriction lists mislead 3,
Direct analyses have repeatedly found that most “forbidden” foods carry little. Using the conventional 6 mg-per-serving cut-off for MAOI patients 25Reference 25Refining the MAOI diet: tyramine content of pizzas and soy productsView study →:
| Food | Measured tyramine | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Chicken liver, aged 9 days | 63.84 mg per 30 g 24Reference 24Tyramine content of previously restricted foods in monoamine oxidase inhibitor dietsView study → | Genuinely dangerous |
| Air-dried sausage | above 6 mg per 30 g serving 24Reference 24Tyramine content of previously restricted foods in monoamine oxidase inhibitor dietsView study → | Restrict |
| Sauerkraut | 7.75 mg per 250 g 24Reference 24Tyramine content of previously restricted foods in monoamine oxidase inhibitor dietsView study → | Restrict |
| Soy sauce | 0.941 mg/mL 24Reference 24Tyramine content of previously restricted foods in monoamine oxidase inhibitor dietsView study → | Restrict — small volumes add up |
| Tofu stored a week | clinically significant levels 25Reference 25Refining the MAOI diet: tyramine content of pizzas and soy productsView study → | Restrict |
| Commercial chain pizza (incl. double pepperoni, double cheese) | no significant tyramine 25Reference 25Refining the MAOI diet: tyramine content of pizzas and soy productsView study → | Safe |
| Most modern cheeses in normal portions | reduced by starter cultures and hygiene standards 3Reference 3A reassessment of the safety profile of monoamine oxidase inhibitors: elucidating tired old tyramine mythsView study → | Usually safe; aged/gourmet varieties are the exception |
Risk-assessment work on dry fermented sausages puts numbers on the residual hazard: mean exposure was 6.2 mg per meal, the risk to healthy consumers was negligible, but the probability of a person on a classic MAOI exceeding the 6 mg safe threshold from that food alone was 34% 26Reference 26Tyramine and histamine risk assessment related to consumption of dry fermented sausages by the Spanish populationView study →. Broader surveys of fermented foods and cheeses reach the same shape of conclusion — a minority of high-amine products carrying most of the risk 27,
The obsolete lists (bananas, avocado, yeast spreads in ordinary amounts, chocolate, most beers) largely reflect either historically higher-amine products or confusion with other biogenic amines; the sensible modern instruction is to avoid a short list of aged, cured and fermented items rather than to police the whole diet 3,
Tyramine in Herbs
This is the compound-unique material — the reason tyramine is in a herbal database rather than a food-safety one.
Tyramine occurs, generally in trace amounts, across a scattered set of plant families. Within this database it is a listed constituent of:
- Broom (Cytisus scoparius) — the original herbal case. Mid-century Belgian work characterised broom’s vasoconstrictor amines, tyramine among them 34Reference 34Jaminet F (1953). [Biochemical study of broom herb (Sarothamnus scoparius L.). I. Its vasoconstrictor amines]. Journal de Pharmacie de Belgique. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/13053399/View study →, and the flowering tops carry it alongside hydroxytyramine (dopamine) and the quinolizidine alkaloids sparteine and cytisine. Broom’s pharmacopoeial contraindication with MAO inhibitors traces directly to this amine content — it is pharmacological inference, not a demonstrated clinical interaction.
- Common reed (Phragmites australis) — carries tyramine together with N-methyltyramine and N,N-dimethyltyramine (hordenine) and β-carboline MAO inhibitors (harman, harmine, harmaline) in the same plant, which is the least comfortable combination in the set.
- Peyote and San Pedro — trace tyramine accompanies mescaline and hordenine in the mescaline cacti; the San Pedro alkaloid survey also reports 3-methoxytyramine at around 0.01% of dry stem 35Reference 35New mescaline concentrations from 14 taxa/cultivars of Echinopsis spp. (Cactaceae) (“San Pedro”) and their relevance to shamanic practiceView study →.
- Shepherd’s purse (Capsella bursa-pastoris) — mid-century work traced the herb’s “physiologically active substances” to its biogenic amines 36Reference 36Physiologically active substance in Capsella bursa-pastorisView study →, and tyramine sits alongside choline and acetylcholine in its constituent list. It is also the reason the herb’s traditional “mild antihypertensive” framing is internally awkward: tyramine is a pressor amine.
- Tick trefoil (Desmodium spp.) — listed with tyramine, N,N-dimethyltyramine and hordenine.
- Acacia — species-dependent. Phenethylamines are unequivocally confirmed in Australian Acacia, while reports for southern African Vachellia/Senegalia rest on tentative or anecdotal data and are not reliable 37Reference 37Rumors of psychedelics, psychotropics and related derivatives in Vachellia and Senegalia in contrast with verified records in Australian AcaciaView study →. This is a genus where the amine claim must be attached to a species, not to the genus.
The herb-level implication is narrower than it looks. No quantitative tyramine figure has been published for any of these herbs, and the amounts described are trace. A cup of infusion is not a portion of nine-day-old chicken liver. The realistic concern is not that a tyramine-bearing herb will spike blood pressure on its own but that (a) it adds to dietary tyramine load in someone on an irreversible MAOI, and (b) in plants like common reed, Syrian rue and the ayahuasca vine, MAO-inhibiting β-carbolines and tyramine-type amines occur in the same preparation or the same brew — the herb supplies both halves of the interaction.
Related tyramine derivatives appear widely enough in plants to have their own entries here: the phenolic amides N-trans-p-caffeoyltyramine and N-benzoyltyramine, the positional isomer meta-tyramine, and the N-methylated series running from N-methyltyramine through hordenine to candicine, which is well characterised in Citrus 38Reference 38N-methylated derivatives of tyramine in citrus genus plants: identification of N,N,N-trimethyltyramine (candicine)View study →. These are chemically related but pharmacologically distinct — an amide-bound tyramine is not free tyramine and does not carry the pressor liability.
What It's Used For
Tyramine has no therapeutic application, so the evidence below is about what it does, not what it treats. The strongest data by far are human pressor-challenge studies; everything else is preclinical.
Support is an experimental score — weighted by study type (human > animal > in vitro) and volume. A beta, not a validated metric. Note that a high score here means “well demonstrated”, not “beneficial”: the best-evidenced entry is an adverse interaction.
The marquee finding, and the one place where the isolated molecule is itself the object of human study. Oral or intravenous tyramine is titrated to a defined systolic rise (conventionally 30 mmHg) before and during MAO-inhibitor treatment; the ratio is the potentiation factor. Tranylcypromine shifts the oral curve 20–40-fold 15,
Clinically this is a hypertensive urgency with severe headache — historically, with cheese, occasionally fatal 2,
Gap: the challenge studies use encapsulated or meal-embedded pure tyramine in healthy volunteers or stable patients; interindividual pressor sensitivity varies severalfold and is not predictable from genotype 3,
In people not taking an MAO inhibitor, tyramine still raises blood pressure — it just takes a great deal of it. In 88 healthy volunteers given 400 mg orally, systolic pressure rose more than 10 mmHg in 71%, and individually variable peaks above 40 mmHg occurred in fewer than 10%, at plasma concentrations above 60 µg/L 13Reference 13Highly variable pharmacokinetics of tyramine in humans and polymorphisms in OCT1, CYP2D6, and MAO-AView study →.
The rise correlates strongly with plasma tyramine, confirming it is systemic exposure — not gut contact — that drives the effect 13Reference 13Highly variable pharmacokinetics of tyramine in humans and polymorphisms in OCT1, CYP2D6, and MAO-AView study →.
For scale: 400 mg is roughly 65 times the 6 mg per-serving threshold used for MAOI patients 25,
Gap: these are single acute doses of the pure isolate in fasted or standardised conditions. Nothing establishes a chronic-exposure effect of ordinary dietary tyramine on blood pressure in unmedicated people, and no plant or extract has been tested this way.
Because tyramine is a prototypic MAO-A substrate with a short half-life and a measurable pharmacodynamic read-out, it has been used as an in vivo probe for MAO-A activity — both to characterise new drugs (the pressor test above) and to look for constitutive differences between people. The 88-volunteer pharmacogenetic study is the most complete attempt: 76.8% of the dose was recovered as the MAO metabolite 4-HPAA, systemic 4-HPAA exposure varied only up to threefold, and functional polymorphisms in MAO-A, OCT1 and CYP2D6 had no significant effect on tyramine kinetics or pressor response 13Reference 13Highly variable pharmacokinetics of tyramine in humans and polymorphisms in OCT1, CYP2D6, and MAO-AView study →.
Selegiline studies used the same read-out to show that MAO-B selectivity is lost above 20 mg/day 17Reference 17Tyramine kinetics and pressor sensitivity during monoamine oxidase inhibition by selegilineView study →.
Gap: the probe works for drug characterisation but failed as a marker of heritable MAO-A variation — the large interindividual spread in pressor sensitivity remains unexplained 3,
Tyramine is one of the endogenous trace amines, present in the mammalian nervous system at nanomolar levels. The 2001 cloning of the trace amine-associated receptor family gave these amines a dedicated GPCR target: tyramine, β-phenylethylamine, tryptamine and octopamine bind and activate TAAR1, which is expressed in monoaminergic brain regions and peripheral tissue 9,
TAAR1 modulates dopaminergic and serotonergic transmission and has become a genuine CNS drug target in its own right 11,
In the vasculature, TAAR-like receptors appear to mediate a component of trace-amine vasoconstriction independent of noradrenaline release 7,
Gap: all of this is receptor pharmacology and rodent work. There is no human outcome attributable to tyramine acting at TAAR1, and endogenous tyramine concentrations are far below those used in the receptor assays — the therapeutic interest is in synthetic TAAR1 agonists, not in tyramine.
The weakest of the well-known claims. Tyramine’s place on migraine trigger lists is largely inherited from the cheese-effect era and from patient self-report. A narrative review that searched tyramine specifically alongside the other candidate dietary triggers concluded that caffeine withdrawal and monosodium glutamate have the strongest provocation evidence, with gluten-, histamine- and alcohol-containing foods supported only by modest observational data — tyramine did not emerge among the triggers with positive provocation studies 29Reference 29Diet and headache: part 1View study →.
A dedicated review of biogenic-amine intolerance reached a similarly deflationary conclusion about the strength of the evidence linking dietary amines to symptoms in people not taking MAOIs 30Reference 30ReviewIntolerance to dietary biogenic amines: a reviewView study →.
Gap: provocation studies of pure tyramine in migraineurs are old, small and inconsistent; the modern literature has not resolved whether a susceptible subgroup exists. Self-reported “cheese and chocolate” triggers are also confounded by premonitory-phase food craving, which reverses the causal arrow.
The newest and most speculative line. Gut bacteria — particularly Enterococcus — carry a tyrosine decarboxylase (tyrDC) that produces tyramine in the intestine; the same enzyme also decarboxylates levodopa, which is how it was first characterised as a clinically relevant gut-bacterial pathway 32Reference 32Discovery and inhibition of an interspecies gut bacterial pathway for levodopa metabolismView study →. A 2024 study identified the α2A-adrenergic receptor (ADRA2A) as highly expressed in intestinal stem cells, showed that Enterococcus-derived tyramine is a microbial ligand for it, and demonstrated using a tyrDC-deficient bacterial strain and epithelial Adra2a-knockout mice that this axis suppresses stem-cell proliferation and worsens DSS colitis — reversible with the ADRA2A antagonist yohimbine 31Reference 31Enterococcus-derived tyramine hijacks α2A-adrenergic receptor in intestinal stem cells to exacerbate colitisView study →.
Gap: mouse and organoid work from a single group, in an experimental colitis model. It has no established human relevance and no bearing on the dietary-tyramine question, but it is the first serious proposal that endogenously produced tyramine does something other than get destroyed.
Mechanisms
| Target / pathway | Effect | Relevant to |
|---|---|---|
| Noradrenaline transporter (NET) → vesicular monoamine transporter | taken up into sympathetic terminals, displaces stored noradrenaline, which exits by reverse transport | the pressor response (the classicalclinically relevant route) |
| α1-adrenoceptors (indirectly) | vasoconstriction — mediated by the released noradrenaline, not by tyramine binding | blood-pressure risehypertensive crisis |
| MAO-A (intestinal mucosa + liver) | near-complete oxidative deamination on first pass → 4-hydroxyphenylacetic acid; this is the protective barrier | why dietary tyramine is normally inert; why MAOIs are dangerous |
| MAO-B | minor contribution to tyramine clearance; selective MAO-B inhibition spares the gut barrier | why rasagiline/safinamide need no tyramine diet |
| TAAR1 (trace amine-associated receptor 1) | direct agonism; modulates dopaminergic/serotonergic transmission | trace-amine neuromodulation (preclinical) |
| TAAR-like vascular receptors | direct, adrenoceptor-independent vasoconstriction in isolated porcine coronary artery | a non-indirect component of the vascular effect (in vitro) |
| α2A-adrenoceptor on intestinal stem cells | microbially produced tyramine suppresses stem-cell proliferation | gut-microbial signalling (mouse) |
| Sulfotransferase / conjugation | secondary route; conjugated tyramine rises when MAO is inhibited | shifts in metabolite profile on selegiline |
The load-bearing row is MAO-A. Almost everything distinctive about tyramine’s pharmacology is a consequence of how thoroughly that one enzyme normally destroys it.
Pharmacokinetics
Tyramine’s pharmacokinetics are the reason the compound is interesting, so they deserve the weight.
Absorption and first pass. Tyramine is absorbed readily from the gut, but almost none of it survives. MAO-A in the intestinal mucosa and then in the liver deaminates it on first pass, so oral bioavailability of the free amine is very low and highly dependent on how fast the dose arrives. Quantitatively: after 400 mg orally in 88 volunteers, 76.8% of the dose was recovered in urine as 4-hydroxyphenylacetic acid (4-HPAA), the MAO metabolite, confirming oxidative deamination as the dominant pathway; mean AUC was 3.74 min·µg/mL and apparent oral clearance a very high 107 L/min 13Reference 13Highly variable pharmacokinetics of tyramine in humans and polymorphisms in OCT1, CYP2D6, and MAO-AView study →. An independent 200 mg study gave apparent oral clearance of 135 ± 55 L/min and peak serum tyramine of 37.7 ± 26 ng/mL fasted 14Reference 14Tyramine pharmacokinetics and reduced bioavailability with foodView study →.
Half-life. Short — about 0.53 hours (roughly 32 minutes) after an oral dose in fasted subjects, with peak concentrations between 20 minutes and 1 hour 14Reference 14Tyramine pharmacokinetics and reduced bioavailability with foodView study →. A tyramine pressor episode is therefore sharp and self-limiting rather than prolonged.
The food effect is large and practically important. The same 200 mg dose taken with a meal produced 53% lower AUC and 72% lower Cmax than the fasted dose, with peak concentration delayed and prolonged 14Reference 14Tyramine pharmacokinetics and reduced bioavailability with foodView study →. Challenge studies independently find that roughly twice the tyramine is needed with food to produce an equivalent pressor response 14,
What MAO inhibition changes. Inhibiting MAO does not just raise tyramine exposure; it redirects metabolism. On selegiline 20 mg/day the 4-HPAA share of recovered material fell from 86% to 64% while conjugated tyramine rose from 13% to 35% — conjugation partially compensating for the lost deamination 17Reference 17Tyramine kinetics and pressor sensitivity during monoamine oxidase inhibition by selegilineView study →. Under moclobemide, peak plasma tyramine after an oral dose rose 2.6-fold, and a 2.5-fold lower plasma concentration produced the same blood-pressure rise, indicating both increased exposure and increased sensitivity 15Reference 15Tyramine pressor effect in man: studies with moclobemide, a novel, reversible monoamine oxidase inhibitorView study →.
What does not explain the variability. Given the size of the interindividual differences in pressor sensitivity, the obvious hypothesis was genetic. It failed: functionally relevant polymorphisms in OCT1, CYP2D6 (including poor and ultra-rapid metaboliser genotypes) and MAO-A had no significant effect on tyramine pharmacokinetics, metabolism to 4-HPAA, or pressor response 13Reference 13Highly variable pharmacokinetics of tyramine in humans and polymorphisms in OCT1, CYP2D6, and MAO-AView study →. Systemic 4-HPAA exposure varied only up to threefold, arguing against the existence of ultra-low or ultra-high peripheral MAO-A phenotypes 13Reference 13Highly variable pharmacokinetics of tyramine in humans and polymorphisms in OCT1, CYP2D6, and MAO-AView study →. The variability is real but its source is unidentified.
Clinical Trials
There are no trials of tyramine as a treatment, because it is not one. The human clinical literature consists almost entirely of tyramine-challenge studies run as safety pharmacology for MAO-inhibitor drugs — a well-populated, methodologically consistent body of work spanning tranylcypromine, moclobemide, selegiline (oral and transdermal), rasagiline, safinamide and linezolid 15,
| Completed | Planned | Terminated | Preclinical |
|---|---|---|---|
| Extensive — pressor-challenge safety studies for every MAOI class; human PK/pharmacogenetics 13, | — | — | TAAR1 receptor pharmacology; vascular mechanism; gut-microbial ADRA2A axis |
Last checked: July 2026.
Isolate vs. Plant Studies
Unusually for this database, essentially all the evidence is isolate evidence — and that is a strength for the pharmacology and a weakness for the herbal question.
Every human dataset here used pure tyramine: encapsulated doses of 50–400 mg, intravenous infusions, or a tyramine-enriched meal built from analysed aged cheese 13,
The plant side is the opposite. Tyramine’s occurrence in broom, common reed, tick trefoil, shepherd’s purse and the mescaline cacti is reported qualitatively only 34,
The food literature sits in between: measured concentrations in real matrices 24,
Prevalence in Nature
Tyramine is one of the most widely distributed simple amines in biology, appearing wherever tyrosine is decarboxylated — in plants, in bacteria, and endogenously in animals.
In plants it occurs at trace levels across scattered families: Fabaceae (broom, tick trefoil), Poaceae (common reed), Brassicaceae (shepherd’s purse), Cactaceae (peyote, San Pedro) and species-dependent occurrences in Acacia 34,
In microbes it is a fermentation product. Lactic-acid bacteria, enterococci and various contaminants carry tyrosine decarboxylase and generate tyramine during cheese ripening, sausage fermentation, soy fermentation and spoilage — which is why levels track microbial ecology and hygiene rather than the raw ingredient 27,
In animals, including humans, tyramine is a genuine endogenous trace amine, present in the nervous system at nanomolar concentrations alongside β-phenylethylamine, tryptamine and octopamine, with TAAR1 as a dedicated receptor 9,
Its Role in Plants
In plants, tyramine is primarily a defence intermediate. Tyrosine decarboxylase (TyDC) converts tyrosine to tyramine, and tyramine hydroxycinnamoyltransferase (THT) then conjugates it with hydroxycinnamoyl-CoA esters to form hydroxycinnamic acid amides — feruloyl- and coumaroyltyramine and relatives — which are deposited into the cell wall to reinforce it against pathogens and wounding.
The pathway is inducible and the two enzymes are jointly rate-limiting: in transgenic tobacco, elevating TyDC and THT levels increased wound-induced accumulation of tyramine-derived hydroxycinnamic acid amides 33Reference 33Elevated tyrosine decarboxylase and tyramine hydroxycinnamoyltransferase levels increase wound-induced tyramine-derived hydroxycinnamic acid amide accumulation in transgenic tobacco leavesView study →. Free tyramine is thus best understood as a short-lived metabolic pool feeding a structural defence response, not as a stored secondary metabolite — which is consistent with how little of it is found free in most tissues.
Several of those amides are themselves database entries with their own pharmacology, including N-trans-p-caffeoyltyramine and N-benzoyltyramine.
These are plant-biology functions and carry no implication for human pharmacology.
Discovery & Synthesis
Tyramine was first isolated in 1909 by George Barger and George Walpole, who identified it among the pressor principles of putrefying meat — a provenance that fits the molecule rather well 1Reference 1Isolation of the pressor principles of putrid meatView study →. It was characterised around the same period in ergot and in cheese, and its name derives from tyrosine, itself named from the Greek tyros, “cheese”, because tyrosine was first obtained from casein. The etymological coincidence with the “cheese effect” is genuine but accidental: the naming predates the 1960s clinical discovery by half a century.
The pharmacological story arrived in two waves. The 1909–1930s work established tyramine as a sympathomimetic pressor amine. Then in the 1960s, with MAO-inhibitor antidepressants in wide use, the cheese reaction was recognised and traced experimentally to dietary tyramine 2Reference 2Hypertensive interactions between monoamine oxidase inhibitors and foodstuffsView study → — turning a laboratory curiosity into one of the best-known drug–food interactions in medicine.
Synthesis and manufacture. Tyramine is a structurally trivial molecule and is made synthetically for research use — the obvious routes are decarboxylation of tyrosine and reduction of the corresponding nitrile or oxime. It is not manufactured as a drug, has no commercial extraction industry, and the specific historical first synthesis is not well documented in the accessible literature. The tyramine that matters to people is made by bacteria in food, not in a factory.
Patents: not yet researched.
Toxicity & Safety
Tyramine carries a moderate flag, and the reason is entirely conditional. On its own, in a person with functioning monoamine oxidase, it is one of the least consequential compounds here — over three-quarters of an oral dose is destroyed before it does anything 13Reference 13Highly variable pharmacokinetics of tyramine in humans and polymorphisms in OCT1, CYP2D6, and MAO-AView study →. Combined with an MAO inhibitor, it is capable of a hypertensive crisis. The badge reflects the interaction, not the molecule.
- MAOI + tyramine = hypertensive crisis. With an irreversible non-selective MAOI (phenelzine, tranylcypromine, isocarboxazid) or high-dose oral selegiline, dietary tyramine is potentiated 20–40-fold and can cause severe headache and a dangerous blood-pressure spike; historically, fatalities 2,
3, .15Reference 2Hypertensive interactions between monoamine oxidase inhibitors and foodstuffsView study →Reference 3A reassessment of the safety profile of monoamine oxidase inhibitors: elucidating tired old tyramine mythsView study →Reference 15Tyramine pressor effect in man: studies with moclobemide, a novel, reversible monoamine oxidase inhibitorView study → - The 6 mg-per-meal line. For someone on a classic MAOI, roughly 6 mg of tyramine in a single meal is the conventional safety threshold — a level that aged chicken liver, air-dried sausage, sauerkraut, soy sauce and some aged cheeses can exceed on their own 24,
25, .26Reference 24Tyramine content of previously restricted foods in monoamine oxidase inhibitor dietsView study →Reference 25Refining the MAOI diet: tyramine content of pizzas and soy productsView study →Reference 26Tyramine and histamine risk assessment related to consumption of dry fermented sausages by the Spanish populationView study → - Herbal MAO inhibitors count. The β-carbolines in Syrian rue, ayahuasca vine and common reed inhibit MAO-A; the same dietary rules apply while they are active, and common reed carries both halves of the interaction in one plant.
- Sensitivity varies severalfold between individuals and is not predicted by MAO-A, OCT1 or CYP2D6 genotype 3,
13Reference 3A reassessment of the safety profile of monoamine oxidase inhibitors: elucidating tired old tyramine mythsView study →Reference 13Highly variable pharmacokinetics of tyramine in humans and polymorphisms in OCT1, CYP2D6, and MAO-AView study → . Fixed food lists are a poor substitute for individual judgement 4Reference 4The prescriber’s guide to the MAOI diet — thinking through tyramine troublesView study →. - Selective and reversible inhibitors are lower risk, not no risk. Rasagiline, safinamide and transdermal selegiline showed no clinically significant tyramine reaction in challenge studies 18,
20, ; moclobemide potentiates about fourfold 15Reference 15Tyramine pressor effect in man: studies with moclobemide, a novel, reversible monoamine oxidase inhibitorView study →; linezolid modestly 22Reference 22Effect of oral linezolid on the pressor response to intravenous tyramineView study →. Dose and selectivity both matter — oral selegiline loses its MAO-B selectivity above 20 mg/day 17Reference 17Tyramine kinetics and pressor sensitivity during monoamine oxidase inhibition by selegilineView study →.21Reference 18Effects of a tyramine-enriched meal on blood pressure response in healthy male volunteers treated with selegiline transdermal system 6 mg/24 hourView study →Reference 20Effects of tyramine administration in Parkinson’s disease patients treated with selective MAO-B inhibitor rasagilineView study →Reference 21RCTThe effect of safinamide, a novel drug for Parkinson’s disease, on pressor response to oral tyramine: a randomized, double-blind, clinical trialView study → - Herb-level tyramine is unquantified. No database herb has a published tyramine figure; the MAOI contraindication on those pages is pharmacological inference, not measured exposure.
- Not a concern for people not taking an MAO inhibitor. Intestinal and hepatic MAO-A clear it almost completely; half-life ~0.5 h; the modern food supply carries far less tyramine than the classic restriction lists assume 3,
13, .14Reference 3A reassessment of the safety profile of monoamine oxidase inhibitors: elucidating tired old tyramine mythsView study →Reference 13Highly variable pharmacokinetics of tyramine in humans and polymorphisms in OCT1, CYP2D6, and MAO-AView study →Reference 14Tyramine pharmacokinetics and reduced bioavailability with foodView study →
Full Safety & Interactions Detail
The interaction, named precisely. The enzyme is monoamine oxidase A, and the site that matters is the intestinal mucosa and liver, not the brain. Anything that inhibits MAO-A — irreversibly (phenelzine, tranylcypromine, isocarboxazid), or reversibly (moclobemide), or non-selectively at higher doses (oral selegiline ≥20 mg/day 17Reference 17Tyramine kinetics and pressor sensitivity during monoamine oxidase inhibition by selegilineView study →), or incidentally as a secondary property (the antibiotic linezolid 22Reference 22Effect of oral linezolid on the pressor response to intravenous tyramineView study →) — raises tyramine’s systemic exposure and its pressor effect. Selective MAO-B inhibitors at therapeutic doses (rasagiline 0.5–2 mg/day, safinamide) do not, and challenge studies support prescribing them without a tyramine diet 20,
What a reaction looks like. Abrupt severe (often occipital) headache, a sharp systolic rise, palpitations, sweating, nausea; in severe historical cases, intracranial haemorrhage. It is short-lived, tracking tyramine’s ~30-minute half-life 14Reference 14Tyramine pharmacokinetics and reduced bioavailability with foodView study →. Modern reviews argue that the treatment has historically caused iatrogenic harm — over-aggressive blood-pressure lowering — more often than the reaction itself now does 3Reference 3A reassessment of the safety profile of monoamine oxidase inhibitors: elucidating tired old tyramine mythsView study →.
Proportion, honestly. The modern literature is considerably less alarmist than the 1970s food lists. Most cheeses in normal portions, commercial pizza, and the great majority of everyday foods do not contain problematic tyramine 3,
Other biogenic amines travel with it. Foods high in tyramine are often high in histamine, and histamine intolerance is a separate condition with a much lower tolerable intake 26,
Migraine. Tyramine’s status as a migraine trigger is traditional rather than demonstrated; the trigger with the strongest provocation evidence in the dietary literature is caffeine withdrawal and MSG, not tyramine 29Reference 29Diet and headache: part 1View study →. Individuals who reliably identify a trigger food are worth taking seriously; the general claim is not well supported.
Reproductive note (prose only). No dedicated reproductive- or developmental-toxicity dataset exists for isolated tyramine; the compound has not been assessed for genotoxicity or repeat-dose toxicity as a pure substance in the modern regulatory sense. Pregnancy and lactation decisions belong to the herb or product page where intake is decided, not to this molecule page.
What is not known. Interactions here are limited to the monoamine-oxidase axis and the pressor pharmacology. Tyramine has not been characterised as a CYP or P-glycoprotein substrate/inhibitor of consequence, and the one pharmacogenetic study to look found no effect of CYP2D6 or OCT1 genotype on its handling 13Reference 13Highly variable pharmacokinetics of tyramine in humans and polymorphisms in OCT1, CYP2D6, and MAO-AView study →.
Dosage
There is no dose of tyramine. It is not a medicine, not a supplement, and nothing here should be read as an intake target. The figures below are the doses used in research, recorded because they give the only quantitative sense of scale available.
| Setting | Dose used | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Human pharmacokinetics / pharmacogenetics | 400 mg oral, single dose, 88 healthy volunteers | 13Reference 13Highly variable pharmacokinetics of tyramine in humans and polymorphisms in OCT1, CYP2D6, and MAO-AView study → |
| Human pharmacokinetics, fed vs. fasted | 200 mg oral | 14Reference 14Tyramine pharmacokinetics and reduced bioavailability with foodView study → |
| Tyramine pressor test (methodology) | escalating oral or IV doses titrated to a +30 mmHg systolic rise | 5, |
| Tyramine challenge in MAO-B-inhibitor patients | 50–75 mg oral | 20Reference 20Effects of tyramine administration in Parkinson’s disease patients treated with selective MAO-B inhibitor rasagilineView study → |
| Tyramine-enriched meal challenge (transdermal selegiline) | ~400 mg as aged cheese | 18Reference 18Effects of a tyramine-enriched meal on blood pressure response in healthy male volunteers treated with selegiline transdermal system 6 mg/24 hourView study → |
| No-effect level on moclobemide | no systolic rise below 80 mg oral tyramine, or plasma <20 ng/mL | 15Reference 15Tyramine pressor effect in man: studies with moclobemide, a novel, reversible monoamine oxidase inhibitorView study → |
| Conventional MAOI dietary safety threshold | 6 mg per meal | 25, |
For orientation: the 6 mg-per-meal MAOI threshold is about 1/65th of the 400 mg dose used to study tyramine pharmacology in unmedicated volunteers 13,
Herbal exposure is unquantified. No tyramine figure has been published for broom, common reed, tick trefoil, shepherd’s purse or the mescaline cacti, and the reported amounts are described as trace. These are doses studied in research and a clinical safety threshold — not a personal recommendation.
References
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