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Fake Sweeteners May Alter Sugar Metabolism
The artificial sweeteners aspartame, sucralose, and saccharin cause blood glucose abnormalities ( how well their bodies metabolize sugar) in mice and some humans, a team reports in an article published online September 17 in Nature.
The changes in glucose tolerance seem to be driven by the microbiome and can be reproduced in germ-free mice by giving them gut microbes from a person who has consumed the sweeteners.
“We are by no means prepared to make recommendations about the use and dose of sweeteners, but these results should prompt additional study and debate on the massive use of artificial sweeteners,” said Eran Segal, a computational biologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and a senior author of the paper.
Artificial sweeteners are not digested by the human body, which is why they have no calories. However, they still must pass through our gastrointestinal tract, where they encounter the vast ecosystem of bacteria that thrive in our guts. These bacteria, though not technically part of our bodies, still play an important role in our physiology, including how we process glucose and other sugars.
The first study showed evidence that the bacteria in the mice’s gut was being affected by the artificial sweetener.
Next, the researchers transplanted gut bacteria from mice that had consumed saccharin into other mice that had no gut bacteria of their own. Six days later, those mice had lost some of their ability to process sugar.
Genetic analysis revealed that the composition of the gut bacteria in mice had indeed changed after exposure to the artificial sweetener — some types of bacteria became more abundant, while others shrank.
“Many of the pathways that changed are pathways that have been previously linked to susceptibility of obesity and adult onset diabetes,” said Dr. Eran Elinav, the co-senior author of the study and researcher at the Weizmann Institute.
Although the human aspect of this study is interesting, it is far from conclusive, other researchers say.
“The data in mice are very, very clear,” said Cathryn Nagler, who studies the microbiome at the University of Chicago. “The limited amount of research they did on humans at least suggests we need to examine our artificial sweetener use more carefully.”
She said artificial sweeteners may well belong on the list of diet and lifestyle changes that are implicated in the rise of “diseases of the Western lifestyle” like diabetes, obesity and food allergies, none of which were as prevalent 50 years ago.
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