Sugar-sweetened drinks alter intestine composition, which might enhance the danger of glycemic traits and diabetes. Credit score: Cell Metabolism (2025). DOI: 10.1016/j.cmet.2024.12.004
It’s well-known that consuming sugary drinks will increase the danger of diabetes, however the mechanism behind this relationship is unclear. Now, in a paper showing in Cell Metabolism, researchers present that metabolites produced by intestine microbes may play a job.
In a long-term cohort of US Hispanic/Latino adults, the researchers recognized variations within the intestine microbiota and blood metabolites of people with a excessive consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks. The altered metabolite profile seen in sugary beverage drinkers was related to the next danger of growing diabetes within the subsequent 10 years. Since a few of these metabolites are produced by intestine microbes, this means that the microbiome may mediate the affiliation between sugary drinks and diabetes.
“Our study suggests a potential mechanism to explain why sugar-sweetened beverages are bad for your metabolism,” says senior writer Qibin Qi, an epidemiologist at Albert Einstein Faculty of Medication. “Although our findings are observational, they provide insights for potential diabetes prevention or management strategies using the gut microbiome.”
Sugar-sweetened drinks are the primary supply of added sugar within the diets of US adults—in 2017 and 2018, US adults consumed a mean of 34.8g of added sugar every day from sugary drinks comparable to soda and sweetened fruit juice. In comparison with added sugars in stable meals, added sugar in drinks “might be more easily absorbed, and they have a really high energy density because they’re just sugar and water,” says Qi.
Earlier research in Europe and China have proven that sugar-sweetened drinks alter intestine microbiome composition, however that is the primary research to research whether or not this microbial change impacts host metabolism and diabetes danger. It is also the primary research to research the difficulty within the US-based Hispanic/Latino inhabitants—a bunch that experiences excessive charges of diabetes and is understood to devour excessive volumes of sugar-sweetened drinks.
The workforce used knowledge from the continued Hispanic Group Well being Research/Research of Latinos (HCHS/SOL), a large-scale cohort research with knowledge from over 16,000 contributors dwelling in San Diego, Chicago, Miami, and the Bronx.
At an preliminary go to, contributors have been requested to recall their weight loss plan from the previous 24 hours and had blood drawn to characterize their serum metabolites. The researchers collected fecal samples and characterised the intestine microbiomes of a subset of the contributors (n = 3,035) at a follow-up go to and used these knowledge to establish associations amongst sugar-sweetened beverage consumption, intestine microbiome composition, and serum metabolites.
They discovered that prime sugary beverage consumption—outlined as two or extra sugary drinks per day—was related to modifications within the abundance of 9 species of micro organism. 4 of those species are recognized to provide short-chain fatty acids—molecules which might be produced when micro organism digest fiber and which might be recognized to positively influence glucose metabolism. Basically, bacterial species that have been positively related to sugary beverage consumption correlated with worse metabolic traits. Curiously, these micro organism weren’t related to sugar ingested from non-beverage sources.
The researchers additionally discovered associations between sugary beverage consumption and 56 serum metabolites, together with a number of metabolites which might be produced by intestine microbiota or are derivatives of gut-microbiota-produced metabolites.
These sugar-associated metabolites have been related to worse metabolic traits, together with greater ranges of fasting blood glucose and insulin, greater BMIs and waist-to-hip ratios, and decrease ranges of high-density lipoprotein ldl cholesterol (“good” ldl cholesterol). Notably, people with greater ranges of those metabolites had the next chance of growing diabetes within the 10 years following their preliminary go to.
“We found that several microbiota-related metabolites are associated with the risk of diabetes,” says Qi. “In other words, these metabolites may predict future diabetes.”
As a result of intestine microbiome samples have been solely collected from a subset of the contributors, the researchers had an inadequate pattern dimension to find out whether or not any species of intestine microbes have been immediately related to diabetes danger, however that is one thing they plan to review additional.
“In the future, we want to test whether the bacteria and metabolites can mediate or at least partially mediate the association between sugar-sweetened beverages and risk of diabetes,” says Qi.
The workforce plans to validate their findings in different populations and to increase their evaluation to research whether or not microbial metabolites are concerned in different persistent well being points linked to sugar consumption, comparable to heart problems.
Extra info:
Sugar-sweetened beverage consumption, intestine microbiota, circulating metabolites, and diabetes danger in Hispanic Group Well being Research/Research of Latinos, Cell Metabolism (2025). DOI: 10.1016/j.cmet.2024.12.004. www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/f … 1550-4131(24)00486-8
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Intestine microbes might mediate the hyperlink between ingesting sugary drinks and diabetes danger (2025, January 31)
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