COMMON sweeteners used in diet fizzy drinks could suppress immune responses to cancer and other diseases, a study suggests.
Scientists found consuming a large amount of sucralose lowered activation of a type of white blood cell in mice.
If the sweetener — found in sugar free Red Bull and Sprite — is found to have similar effects in humans, it could be used to treat people with autoimmune disorders, like type 1 diabetes, they said.
Researchers said their findings should not sound alarm bells for those wanting to ensure they have a healthy immune system or recover from disease.
Professor Karen Vousden, of the Francis Crick Institute, said: "We're hoping to piece together a bigger picture of the effects of diet on health and disease.
“One day we hope we can advise on diets that are best suited to individual patients, or find elements of our diet that doctors can exploit for treatment.
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"More research and studies are needed to see whether these effects of sucralose in mice can be reproduced in humans.
"If these initial findings hold up in people, they could one day offer a way to limit some of the harmful effects of autoimmune conditions."
Sucralose is an artificial sweetener, about 600 times sweeter than sugar, that is commonly used in drinks and food, but the effects it has on the body are not yet fully understood.
Mice in the study, published in Nature, were fed sucralose at levels equivalent to drinking about 30 cups of sweetened coffee in a day, or 10 cans of a diet fizzy drink.
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The mice fed diets containing high doses of sucralose were less able to activate T cells — a type of white blood cell — in response to cancer or infection.
No effect was seen on other types of immune cells.
The researchers hope the findings could lead to a new way of using much higher therapeutic doses of sucralose in patients.
Dr Julianna Blagih said: "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."
Humans drinking normal amounts of the sweeteners would not be exposed to the levels used in this study.
Dr 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 combinational therapies."
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Karis Betts, senior health information manager at Cancer Research UK, said: "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 harmful effects of sucralose for humans so you don't need to think about changing your diet to avoid it."
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