The Non-Nutritive Sweetner Erythritol Adversely Affects Brain Microvascular Endothelial Cell Function | Journal of Applied Physiology | American Physiological Society
The experimental aim of this study was to determine, in vitro, the effect of the non-nutritive sweetener erythritol on brain microvascular endothelial cell oxidative stress, nitric oxide (NO) and endothelin (ET)-1 production, as well as tissue-type plasminogen activator (t-PA) release. Human cerebral microvascular endothelial cells (hCMECs) were cultured and treated with 6 mM of erythritol, equivalent to a typical amount of erythritol [30g] in an artificially sweetened beverage, for 3 hr. Intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) production was significantly higher in hCMECs treated with erythritol (204±32% vs 105±4%) as well as expression of antioxidant proteins superoxide dismutase-1 (332.1±16.2 vs 214.9±4.7 AU; P=0.002) and catalase (30.9±0.3 vs 24.4±0.9 AU; P=0.002). Although endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) expression was not significantly altered (102.8±21.4 vs 99.0±19.9 AU); expression of p-eNOS (Ser1177) was lower (52.1± 2.1 vs 77.3±9.1 AU; P<0.001) and p-eNOS (Thr495
