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    Sugar substitutes can affect blood glucose tolerance, gut bacteria in humans, reveals study

    Synopsis

    Researchers discovered that some of them can actually alter consumers' microbiomes.

    sugar on gutiStock
    The new study, published this month in the medical journal Cell, revealed that all four substances - saccharin, sucralose, aspartame and stevia - changed the gut microbiome.
    The decades-long debate around the health safety of sugar substitutes seems to be getting more complicated as new study has revealed that low-calorie sugar alternatives may actually do more wrong to your gut than previously thought so.

    The new study, published this month in the medical journal Cell, revealed that all four substances - saccharin, sucralose, aspartame and stevia - changed the gut microbiome.

    Gut microbiota is a collection of microorganisms including bacteria and archaea that live in the digestive tracts of vertebrates that help protect humans against disease and enable them to digest food.

    Non-nutritive sweeteners have made the claim that they can provide all the sweetness of sugar without any calories since the late 1800s.

    However, researchers, who published their findings on August 19 in the journal, challenge this belief that these sugar substitutes have no impact on humans. They discovered that some of them can actually alter consumers' microbiomes, which can affect their blood sugar levels.

    The results of the study links two of the sweeteners - saccharin and sucralose - to spike to glucose levels while suggesting that all four sugar substitutes are tied to a shift in gut microbe profiles.

    The team of researchers carefully screened over 1300 people for those who strictly avoid non-nutritive sweeteners in their daily lives, and found a cohort of 120 people to answer this crucial question.

    Six groups of 20 were created from these participants. In four groups, participants consumed commercial packets of one of the four sweeteners at a level that was below their daily consumption limit.

    While one group only consumed filler used in these packets. Whereas the sixth group had no intervention. During the two-week-long observation for the study, participants consumed their ordered amount of sweetener or the filler while they also took oral glucose tolerance tests which are used to measure the body's response to sugar and can be employed to diagnose some forms of diabetes.

    Study investigators also collected oral and stool samples from the participants to examine the species of microbes present.

    The researchers transferred microbial samples from the study participants to germ-free mice, which have been raised in completely sterile conditions and lack any microbiomes of their own, in order to establish causation.

    The Weizmann Institute of Science and the German National Cancer Center (DKFZ) immunologist and microbiome researcher Eran Elinav claims that "the results were quite striking."

    "When we transferred the microbiome of the top responder individuals collected at a time point in which they were consuming the respective non-nutritive sweeteners into these sterile mice, the recipient mice developed glycemic alterations that very significantly mirrored those of the donor individuals in all of the non-nutritive sweetener groups but in none of the controls. In contrast, the microbiomes of the bottom responders were typically unable to trigger such glycemic responses," he said, as quoted by ANI.

    These findings "indicate that, occasionally, glycemic changes in consumers may be induced in a highly personalised manner by the microbiome changes in response to human consumption of non-nutritive sweetener."

    The research only involved healthy people without any weight issue or obesity.
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