Weihrauch M R, Diehl V
Department of Internal Medicine I of the University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany.
Ann Oncol. 2004 Oct;15(10):1460-5. doi: 10.1093/annonc/mdh256.
Artificial sweeteners are added to a wide variety of food, drinks, drugs and hygiene products. Since their introduction, the mass media have reported about potential cancer risks, which has contributed to undermine the public's sense of security. It can be assumed that every citizen of Western countries uses artificial sweeteners, knowingly or not. A cancer-inducing activity of one of these substances would mean a health risk to an entire population. We performed several PubMed searches of the National Library of Medicine for articles in English about artificial sweeteners. These articles included 'first generation' sweeteners such as saccharin, cyclamate and aspartame, as well as 'new generation' sweeteners such as acesulfame-K, sucralose, alitame and neotame. Epidemiological studies in humans did not find the bladder cancer-inducing effects of saccharin and cyclamate that had been reported from animal studies in rats. Despite some rather unscientific assumptions, there is no evidence that aspartame is carcinogenic. Case-control studies showed an elevated relative risk of 1.3 for heavy artificial sweetener use (no specific substances specified) of >1.7 g/day. For new generation sweeteners, it is too early to establish any epidemiological evidence about possible carcinogenic risks. As many artificial sweeteners are combined in today's products, the carcinogenic risk of a single substance is difficult to assess. However, according to the current literature, the possible risk of artificial sweeteners to induce cancer seems to be negligible.
人工甜味剂被添加到各种各样的食品、饮料、药品和卫生用品中。自引入以来，大众媒体报道了其潜在的癌症风险，这削弱了公众的安全感。可以假定西方国家的每个公民都在有意或无意地使用人工甜味剂。这些物质中的任何一种具有致癌活性都将意味着对整个人口的健康风险。我们在国立医学图书馆的PubMed数据库中进行了几次检索，查找有关人工甜味剂的英文文章。这些文章包括“第一代”甜味剂，如糖精、环己基氨基磺酸钠和阿斯巴甜，以及“新一代”甜味剂，如乙酰磺胺酸钾、三氯蔗糖、阿力甜和纽甜。人体流行病学研究未发现动物（大鼠）研究中所报道的糖精和环己基氨基磺酸钠的诱发膀胱癌作用。尽管有一些不太科学的假设，但没有证据表明阿斯巴甜具有致癌性。病例对照研究显示，每天大量使用人工甜味剂（未指明具体物质）>1.7克，相对风险升高至1.3。对于新一代甜味剂，建立任何有关可能致癌风险的流行病学证据还为时过早。由于当今产品中许多人工甜味剂是混合使用的，单一物质的致癌风险很难评估。然而，根据目前的文献，人工甜味剂诱发癌症的可能风险似乎可以忽略不计。
