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Surprising Study Results for High Saccharin Intake and Glucose Intolerance

A popular report suggested that using artificial sweetener can induce glucose intolerance by changing gut microbiota.

Medical findings and public opinion have often wavered on long lasting affects of artificial sweetener use.

To validate these findings, George Kyriazis, PhD, and his team at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, gave the maximum acceptable daily amount of saccharin (400 mg/daily) to healthy adults for two weeks—to allow researchers to isolate the factors of saccharin without having to account for unhealthy habits or underlying conditions.

They expected their findings to confirm that saccharin may alter the metabolic profile or gut microbiota, but found the opposite. Saccharin did not drive the development of diabetes or impact gut microbiota. 

"It's not that the findings of previous studies are wrong, they just didn't adequately control for things like underlying health conditions, diet choices and lifestyle habits," said George Kyriazis, assistant professor of biological chemistry and pharmacology at Ohio State and senior author of the study, in a press release. "By studying the artificial sweetener saccharin in healthy adults, we've isolated its effects and found no change in participants' gut microbiome or their metabolic profiles, as it was previously suggested.”

In the future, they plan to study each FDA-approved sweetener to see if differences exist in how they are metabolized.

“At this point there’s no comparison as to the choice [between sugar and artificial sweetener]. But like everything, in moderation,” Dr. Kyriazis said.

The NIH, National Institute of Food and Agriculture and AdventHealth institutional funds supported this research, which was published in Microbiome.

 

Video Credit: The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center

Video Source: EurekAlert

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