Can Artificial Sweeteners Cause Glucose Intolerance?

Artificial sweeteners could cause glucose intolerance or other metabolic changes by altering intestinal bacteria, according to a recent study.

“Our relationship with our own individual mix of gut bacteria is a huge factor in determining how the food we eat affects us. Especially intriguing is the link between use of artificial sweeteners – through the bacteria in our guts – to a tendency to develop the very disorders they were designed to prevent; this calls for reassessment of today’s massive, unsupervised consumption of these substances,” said Eran Elinav, MD, co-lead researcher of the study and professor at the Weizmann’s Institute immunology department.

For the study, researchers gave mice water with the FDA's maximum daily measurements of aspartame, saccharin, and sucralose. 
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After 11 weeks, mice given the sweetened water all had elevated blood-glucose levels, compared with mice given a small portion of artificial sweetener and those given regular drinking water. 

Saccharin showed the most pronounced effects on glucose, and was therefore used for the remainder of testing. Mice fed a high-fat diet along with a lower dose of saccharine showed similar glucose levels to those only ingesting the FDA approved amount of the artificial sweetener alone.

Investigators discovered that microbiota changes found in these mice were similar to changes that influence diabetes, obesity and other complications.

Researchers then eradicated gut micrbiota in the mice.  After 4 weeks of antibiotic treatment, researchers observed a complete reversal of the glucose intolerance, even with continued saccharin-laden diets. 

Researchers followed up on their research by testing the fasting glucose levels 381 non-diabetic individuals who regularly consumed artificial sweeteners, finding that those consuming the highest amounts of the substance showed the poorest glucose tolerance, and had significantly different gut microbe profiles compared with those eating less sweeteners.

An additional cohort of 7 individuals with no history of artificial sweetener consumption was given the FDA’s maximum acceptable daily intake of saccharin. After 1 week, 4 of the 7 participants showed decreased glucose tolerance levels compared with baseline measurements.

“Collectively, our results link non-caloric artificial sweeteners consumption, dysbiosis and metabolic abnormalities, thereby calling for a reassessment of massive non-caloric artificial sweeteners usage,” they concluded.

The complete study is published in the September issue of Nature.

-Michelle Canales

References:

Suez J, Korem T, Zeevi D, et al. Artificial sweeteners induce glucose intolerance by altering the gut microbiota. Nature. 2014 Aug [epub ahead of print] doi: 10.1038/nature13793.