Aspartame (E951) is a widely used artificial sweetener found in low-calorie food and drink, as well as medicines. Millions of people worldwide consume aspartame. Long-term consumption may lead to adverse health consequences; such as mood disorders, depression and anxiety. Furthermore, aspartame can interfere with neuronal cell functions leading to neurodegeneration as well as interrupt homeostasis; its use during pregnancy increases preterm birth risk as well as neurodevelopmental anomalies in offspring.
Multiple epidemiological studies have documented associations between consumption of low-calorie sweeteners and the higher incidence of various cancers, such as brain and central nervous system cancer, but this cannot be taken as conclusive evidence that such products increase risk. Aspartame consumption could not be differentiated from other dietary habits and could potentially misclassified; due to such misclassification issues these results cannot prove that consumption increases risk.
Experimental evidence from different animal species demonstrates that frequent high-dose aspartame consumption may be kidney toxic, increasing levels of the formaldehyde metabolite and altering activity of alcohol dehydrogenase type 1. One controlled diet study in which men were randomly assigned either a control diet or one with 25-30% of its calories replaced by aspartame, showed some small increases in blood urea nitrogen and serum triglycerides when given aspartame-containing diet; these changes did not considered clinically significant and the Panel upheld its previous acceptable daily recommendation.
