Women Cancer Health Treatment

The artificial sweetener aspartame is not linked to cancer, according to a report just released by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). The report said there was no cancer risk from foods and drinks containing the food sweetener aspartame, rejecting a scientific study that said the additive was hazardous.

The European food watchdog undertook an urgent review of the additive following a study, published in 2005 by an Italian cancer research body which found the sweetener — widely used in diet foods, soft drinks and as a sugar substitute — increased cancers in rats, which suggested aspartame was carcinogenic. But a working party said the incidence of tumours could not be linked to the artificial sweetener.

The review had been prompted by research undertaken by the European Ramazzini Foundation of Oncology and Environmental Sciences (ERF) in Bologna, Italy, which looked at the incidence of tumours found in rats that had been given varying levels of aspartame. EFSA said its review of the Ramazzini Institute study found no conclusive evidence that aspartame was responsible for increased cancers and that although the additive did cause damage to the rats’ kidneys, this would not happen to humans.

The study monitored more than 1,800 rats, following them throughout their lives. The results, the foundation believed, showed that aspartame had the ability to induce cancers in a number of sites in the animals’ bodies.
“Our conclusion on the basis of all the evidence currently available to us is that there’s no reason to revise the previously established ADI (acceptable daily intake), nor at this stage … to undertake any further extensive review of the safety of aspartame,” EFSA’s Iona Pratt told a news conference.

Dr Iona Pratt, chair of AFC’s working group, said: “The Ramazinni Foundation’s study showed an increase of cancers of the blood - lymphoma and leukaemia - in the rats.”
But, she said, the working group concluded that these tumours were not related to aspartame. AFC said the rate of the tumours was not related to the dose of aspartame, which would have been expected if there was a link.

EFSA said increased incidence of leukaemias and lymphomas in the rats in the Ramazzini study could be put down to chronic health problems that made the animals predisposed to such conditions, and not consumption of aspartame.
It also said the diagnoses of some of the cases of malignant schwannomas (a rare type of tumour) had not been confirmed by other scientific institutions, and that the sweetener showed no evidence of genotoxity - the ability to damage DNA.
“On the basis of the evidence,” said Dr Pratt, “there is no reason to revise the previously established Acceptable Daily Intake (ADI) or to undertake any further revisions of the safety of aspartame.”

A spokesperson from the UK’s Food Standards Agency said: “The EFSA’s announcement raises similar concerns about the Ramazzini study to those expressed by the UK’s independent expert group, the Committee On Carcinogenicity (COC), earlier this year.
“The COC identified a number of issues that indicated the results of the study may not be reliable. These related to concerns about the health status of the animals, some details of methodology which do not conform to currently accepted best practice and adequacy of external peer review.”

“Because of the globalization of the industrialized diet and the ever increasing use of artificial sweeteners among billions of people in both industrialized and developing countries, the European Ramazzini Foundation considers its work on sweeteners to be of the highest priority for the protection of public health,” it said in a statement.
“We have planned and are conducting additional research, not only on aspartame, but also on other widely diffused artificial sweeteners and blends used in thousands of foods, beverages and pharmaceutical products.”