Culture Post: Sugar, Sweeteners Might Trigger Early Puberty in Some Kids

The following is excerpted from an online article posted by HealthDay.

Sugar and artificial sweeteners might increase the risk of early puberty in children, a new study says.

Sugar, aspartame (Equal), sucralose (Splenda), and glycyrrhizin (licorice root) are all significantly associated with a higher risk of early puberty, particularly in genetically predisposed children, researchers reported Sunday at the Endocrine Society’s annual meeting in San Francisco.

Further, the more of these sweeteners that children consumed, the greater their risk of early puberty, researchers found.

“This study is one of the first to connect modern dietary habits — specifically sweetener intake — with both genetic factors and early puberty development in a large, real-world cohort,” researcher Dr. Yang-Ching Chen, a professor of family medicine at Taipei Municipal Wan Fang Hospital and Taipei Medical University in Taiwan, said in a news release.

For the new study, researchers analyzed data on more than 1,400 teens in Taiwan, of whom 481 experienced a form of early puberty called central precocious puberty.

Puberty usually starts between 8 and 13 for girls and 9 to 14 in boys, according to the Cleveland Clinic.

Researchers used questionnaires and urine samples to assess teens’ sweetener intake, and tested their genetic predisposition using a panel of 19 genes related to central precocious puberty.

Not only were certain sweeteners linked to early puberty, but boys and girls responded to different types of sweeteners, researchers found.

Sucralose increases early puberty risk in boys, while glycyrrhizin, sucralose and added sugars increased risk in girls, results show.

The results highlight “gender differences in how sweeteners affect boys and girls, adding an important layer to our understanding of individualized health risks,” Chen said.

Source: HealthDay
https://www.healthday.com/health-news/child-health/sugar-sweeteners-might-trigger-early-puberty-in-some-kids