Routine use of artificial sweeteners may be linked with increased diabetes risk, according to a new study from researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. For the study the researchers conducted experiments on the gut microbes found in both humans and mice.
They examined the effects of artificial sweeteners including aspartame, sucralose and saccharine. They found that depending on the types of microbes discovered in the stomach, some people and mice had between two to four-fold increase in their risk of developing diabetes when exposed to high levels of artificial sweeteners.
The researchers noted that the differences between sweetener users and those who abstained were stark.
"The magnitude of the differences were not just a few percentages. These were actually very dramatic differences we saw both in the mice and in the human settings," said Eran Segal, a study co-author who is a computational biologist at the Weizmann Institute.
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