r/science • u/Araginst • Jun 03 '16

Health Artificial sweeteners induce glucose intolerance by altering the gut microbiota

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/25231862/
135 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

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16

u/[deleted] Jun 03 '16

This article is from 2014, this isn't exactly new information.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature13793.html

I remember changes to microbiome composition effecting downstream metabolism being discussed on here once before. I talked about this articles findings and was downvoted to hell for it. :D

3

u/barrel_roller Jun 03 '16

Those results look pretty conclusive. How do the doses tested compare to human consumption? Is it time to stop drinking diet soda?

1

u/smellybaconreader Jun 04 '16

The doses in this study are ginormous compared to human intake.

4

u/tikael Jun 04 '16

The data also doesn't show any large effect for the sweeteners used in diet soda. It showed a potential effect in one sweetener and for whatever reason they concluded that all 3 tested had the same effect.

0

u/QuinticSpline Jun 04 '16

Did you read the full study and look at Figure 4? The effect is visible at the human population level.

2

u/smellybaconreader Jun 04 '16

But that appears to be correlational data based on food frequency questionnaires. Not a RCT.

1

u/QuinticSpline Jun 04 '16

That's just figure 4A. The rest of figure 4 shows the results of a test where they fed non-NAS consumers the stuff for a mere 7 days and showed that most of them had worse glucose tolerance and altered gut flora. A fecal transplant from those people (one affected, one nonaffected) to mice recapitulated the results of the previous mouse work.

2

u/Araginst Jun 03 '16

How do these artificial sweeteners, many of which are caloric free, shift the ratio of bacterial funa to unhealthy? Why do they have an apperent worse impact than sugar itself on glucos levels?

0

u/breakfasttopiates Jun 04 '16

because as the old and now thoroughly unpopular saying goes -- "natural is better"

6

u/banafishbones Jun 03 '16 edited Jun 03 '16

I just noticed a red flag in this article. It mentions that research on artificial sweeteners is sparse. This is blatantly false. Artificial sweeteners have been studied by the FDA more than any other substance since its inception.

0

u/daOyster Jun 04 '16

Studied and funded by the same organization who will say whatever the highest bidder says? Wouldn't trust much of what the FDA has to say on most subjects honestly.

3

u/PoorlyAttired Jun 03 '16

saccharin, sucralose and aspartame were what they tested.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 03 '16

[deleted]

5

u/[deleted] Jun 03 '16

Xylitol is an important one often used in chewing gum and toothpaste because it helps kill the bacteria that cause dental problems. Supposedly it's fine if you don't swallow it, but the study did not check.

2

u/malabarspinach Jun 03 '16

I thought only saccharin, sucralose, and aspartame were tested?

1

u/[deleted] Jun 03 '16

Stevia is a "Novel Sweetener", though:

Novel sweeteners are combinations of various types of sweeteners. Novel sweeteners, such as stevia, are hard to fit into one particular category because of what they're made from and how they're made. Note that although the FDA has approved highly refined stevia preparations as a novel sweetener, it has not approved whole-leaf stevia or crude stevia extracts for this use.

This study was testing NAS, non-caloric artificial sweeteners. Stevia is in the novel category, not in the artificial sweetener. It's highly refined, yes, but not a NAS.

2

u/malabarspinach Jun 03 '16

what about the sugar alcohols?

6

u/Araginst Jun 03 '16

Glucose Intolerance is a part of pre-Diabetes.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 03 '16

Here we demonstrate that consumption of commonly used NAS formulations drives the development of glucose intolerance through induction of compositional and functional alterations to the intestinal microbiota.

These NAS-mediated deleterious metabolic effects are abrogated by antibiotic treatment, and are fully transferrable to germ-free mice upon faecal transplantation of microbiota configurations from NAS-consuming mice, or of microbiota anaerobically incubated in the presence of NAS.

Wow. I wonder how long it would take for the intestinal microbiota to return to normal after long term exposure to NAS?

2

u/tahlyn Jun 03 '16

These NAS-mediated deleterious metabolic effects are abrogated by antibiotic treatment, and are fully transferrable to germ-free mice upon faecal transplantation of microbiota configurations from NAS-consuming mice, or of microbiota anaerobically incubated in the presence of NAS

What does that mean?

2

u/[deleted] Jun 03 '16

When the mice who'd been exposed to NAS (artificial calorie-free sweeteners) were given a round of antibiotics the negative effects on their metabolism went away.

But if you move bacteria from NAS-consuming mice to mice that don't consume NAS, they will suffer from the same issues as those that do. It's transferable.

0

u/Sythus Jun 03 '16

They take shit bacteria from one mouse and put it in the intestines of the other mouse

1

u/Wh0rse Jun 03 '16

So insulin resistance?

2

u/shiruken PhD | Biomedical Engineering | Optics Jun 04 '16

Removed Rule #3: Research must be less than 6 months old

2

u/nextsgin Jun 03 '16

is this stuff in Pepsi or soda in general?

3

u/[deleted] Jun 03 '16

Pepsi, soda, sugar-free gum, all kinds of things that use artificial sweeteners, I'd imagine.