Non-nutritive sweeteners affect human microbiomes and can alter glycemic responses

Non-nutritive sweeteners promise to deliver all the sugar with no calories. They have been thought to have no effect on the human body, but a study published in the journal Cell on August 19 shows that some sugar substitute can alter the human body's microbiome in a way that can change blood sugar.

Senior author Eran Elinav and his team at the Weizmann Institute of Science and the German National Cancer Center found that non-nutritive sweeteners affect the microbiomes of mice. The team wanted to know if the results would be found in humans.

The research team carefully screened over 1300 individuals for those who strictly avoid non-nutritive sweeteners in their day-to-day lives and identified a cohort of 120 individuals. Two controls and four who took less than the FDA daily allowance of sucralose were included in the group.

We were able to identify changes in the composition and function of gut microbes in subjects consuming non-nutritive sweeteners. According to Elinav, this seems to suggest that the human body is responsive to each of these sweeteners. When we looked at consumers of non-nutritive sweeteners as a group, we found that two of the non-nutritive sweeteners, saccharin and sucralose, had a significant impact on the amount of sugar in the blood. Changes in the microbes were correlated with alterations in the people's responses.

The researchers transferred the samples from the study subjects to the germ-free mice in order to establish causality.

Elinav said the results were striking. In all of the non-nutritive sweetener groups, when we transferred into these sterile mice the microbiome of the top responders collected at a time point in which they were consuming the respective non-nutritive sweetener, the recipient mice developed glycemic alterations that very The bottom responders' microbiome's were not able to elicit such responses. The results suggest that the changes in the gut flora of people who consume non-nutritive sweetener may lead to changes in their blood sugar levels.

Elinav thinks that the effects of the sweeteners will be different for everyone. We need to be aware of the fact that non-nutritive sweeteners aren't good for us. Clinical health implications of the changes they may elicit in humans remain unknown and merit future long term studies.

Elinav says we need to continue searching for solutions to our sweet tooth craving while avoiding sugar, which is the most harmful to our metabolism. I think drinking only water is the best solution.

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1. Jotham Suez, Yotam Cohen, Rafael Valdés-Mas, Uria Mor, Mally Dori-Bachash, Sara Federici, Niv Zmora, Avner Leshem, Melina Heinemann, Raquel Linevsky, Maya Zur, Rotem Ben-Zeev Brik, Aurelie Bukimer, Shimrit Eliyahu-Miller, Alona Metz, Ruthy Fischbein, Olga Sharov, Sergey Malitsky, Maxim Itkin, Noa Stettner, Alon Harmelin, Hagit Shapiro, Christoph K. Stein-Thoeringer, Eran Segal, Eran Elinav. Personalized microbiome-driven effects of non-nutritive sweeteners on human glucose tolerance. Cell, 2022; DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2022.07.016