T cells play a critical role in the immune response. They can kill disease-carrying cells, or they can support B cells in antibody production.
A new study conducted by researchers at the Francis Crick Institute reveals that the artificial sweetener sucralose decreases T cell activity. It will not harm immunity if consumed in moderate amounts. On the bright side, it may work as a treatment for people with immune disorders where T-cells are overly active.
The Study
The Francis Crick Institute study was published in the journal Nature and funded by Cancer Research UK.
Researchers fed mice sucralose at levels equivalent to the acceptable daily intake as recommended by American and European food safety authorities. These levels are somewhat higher than what people normally consume when following a diet that features some artificially sweetened products.
The mice who consumed the sucralose showed reduced T cell activity in response to cancer and infection. Other types of immune cells were unaffected.
Researchers found that a high dose of sucralose decreased T-cell function via its effects on intracellular calcium release.
What Does the Study Mean?
People with healthy immune systems will not be affected by the findings of the study. Most will not be exposed to the levels of sucralose needed to produce the T- cell activity-reducing effects.
However, the results bring good news for people with auto-immune conditions. Researchers are hoping their study opens doors for sucralose-related treatments that reduce T-cell activity.
What the Experts are Saying
Experts involved in the study have weighed in.
Senior study author and Crick principal group leader Karen Vousden says, “We’re hoping to piece together a bigger picture of the effects of the diet on health and disease so that one day we can advise on diets that are best suited to individual patients or find elements of our diet that doctors can exploit for treatment”.
Co-first author and Crick’s postdoctoral training fellow Fabio Zani said, “We do not want people to take away the message that sucralose is harmful if consumed in the course of a normal balanced diet, as the doses we used in mice would be very hard to achieve without medical intervention.
“The impact on the immune system we observed seems reversible and we believe it may be worth studying if sucralose could be used to ameliorate conditions such as autoimmunity, especially in combination therapies”.
Juliana Blagih, co-first author and former doctoral training fellow at Crick (now Assistant Professor at the Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital Research Centre, University of Montreal) says, “We’ve shown that a commonly used sweetener, sucralose, is not a completely inert molecule and we have uncovered an unexpected effect on the immune system. We are keen to explore whether there are other cell types or processes that are similarly affected by this sweetener”.
Karis Betts, senior health information manager at Cancer Research says, “This study begins to explore how high doses of sucralose could potentially be used in new treatment options for patients, but it’s still early days.
“The results of this study don’t show how harmful effects of sucralose are for humans, so you don’t need to think about changing your diet to avoid it.”
The team plans to do more studies to determine if sucralose will have similar effects in humans.
