Sweet Danger: Soda Found to Alter Your Gut and Immune Health

By Israel News Network Group

The consumption of soft drinks, supplemented with white sugar, alters the DNA of gut bacteria and affects the host immune system, according to the findings of a new study published in the journal Nature Communications by researchers at the Technion Institute in Haifa.

The good news? The effects are reversible.

Gut bacteria are important members of the microbial community within our body, i.e., the microbiome. These bacteria, which have co-evolved with humans for generations, are so essential to human health in general and to the development of the immune system in particular that we cannot function without them.

The human gut is constantly influenced by changes in the environment. To keep up, the gut bacteria must adapt quickly. They do this through a process called functional plasticity, which allows them to change their behavior and functions in response to factors like nearby microbes, our health status, and what we eat.

A previous study by Professor Naama Geva-Zatorsky and her team discovered that one way gut bacteria adapt to environmental changes is through DNA inversions—rapid genetic switches that help them respond and defend themselves.

In their current study, the researchers investigated how these DNA inversions occur in response to dietary factors. They found that consuming soft drinks, which contain white sugar, can alter the DNA of gut bacteria and, in turn, impact the host’s immune system.

The researchers studied the effects of consuming different dietary components on the DNA inversion profile of these bacteria, in vitro, in mice, and humans. They discovered that white sugar consumption causes DNA inversions in these bacteria, which led to changes in inflammatory markers of the immune system, including ones in T-cell populations, cytokine secretion, and gut permeability.

The good news is that these effects are reversible; once mice stopped consuming white sugar, the bacterial DNA inversion state reverted, and the immune system’s state returned to normal.