Effect of an alcohol-free beer enriched with isomaltulose and a resistant dextrin on insulin resistance in diabetic patients with overweight or obesity.

BACKGROUND & AIMS: The quality of carbohydrates has an essential role in nutritional management of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) because of its substantial impact on glucose homeostasis. Alcohol-free beer has beneficial bioactive components but it has a relatively high glycemic-index so its consumption is restricted in diabetic subjects. We aimed to explore the effect of an alcohol-free beer with modified carbohydrate composition almost completely eliminating maltose and adding isomaltulose (16.5 g/day) and a resistant maltodextrin (5.28 g/day) in comparison to a regular alcohol-free beer on glycemic control of diabetic subjects with overweight or obesity.

DESIGN

We randomized 41 subjects into two groups: a) consumption of 66 cL/day of; regular alcohol-free beer for the first 10 weeks and 66 cL/day of alcohol-free beer with modified carbohydrate composition for the next 10 weeks; b) the same described intervention in opposite order. There was a washout period for 6-8 weeks between the two interventions. Participants were counseled to adhere to a healthy diet for cardiovascular health and to increase physical activity. Clinical, biochemical, anthropometric, lifestyle and satiety assessments were performed at the beginning and at the end of each period.

RESULTS

Subjects showed significantly weight loss after the two ten weeks periods (-1.69 ± 3.21% and -1.77 ± 3.70% after experimental and regular alcohol-free beers, respectively, P = 0.881). Glucose and glycated hemoglobin did not significantly change after any period. Insulin concentrations and HOMA-IR significantly decreased (-11.1 [-21.3-4.64]% and -1.92 ± 32.8% respectively) after the intake of experimental alcohol-free beer but not after regular alcohol-free beer. Reductions remained statistically significant after adjusting for weight loss, energy intake, physical activity and intervention order. Subjects reported higher satiety scores after consuming experimental alcohol-free beer.

CONCLUSIONS

An alcohol-free beer including the substitution of regular carbohydrates for low doses of isomaltulose and the addition of a resistant maltodextrin within meals led to an improvement in insulin resistance in subjects with T2DM and overweight or obesity.

CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRATION

The clinical trial has been registered in ClinicalTrials.gov (Identifier: NCT03337828).