Scandal How the sugar industry manipulated research findings

Unloving research retained for decades

The sugar industry has made a massive impact on research in the past, manipulating study results in their favor. After the first scientific evidence for this systematic approach to the sugar industry was presented last year, a recent US study confirms the impression that the risks to health have been systematically downplayed or concealed for decades.

Just over a year ago, scientists from the University of California San Francisco had already published a study that showed how the sugar industry has influenced scientific research in the past. In the current investigation, this impression is now confirmed. The research team led by Stanton Glantz from the University of California San Francisco reports in the journal "PLoS Biology" how the negative results from animal studies have remained unpublished for decades, thus underestimating the health risks of sugar intake.

The sugar industry has in the past systematically tried to influence research results in their favor. (Image: Sebastian Studio / fotolia.com)

Risk of coronary heart disease downplayed

In 1965, the Sugar Research Foundation (SRF), as the lobbying arm of the US sugar industry, secretly funded a study in the New England Journal of Medicine, which questions the link between sugar intake and blood lipid levels and coronary heart disease (CHD) trivialized. Subsequently, the SRF financed animal experiments, which should better assess the risk of CHD in sugar consumption. In the study titled "Project 259: Dietary Carbohydrates and Blood Fat in Sterile Rats," under the direction of Drs. W.F.R. Pover at the University of Birmingham (United Kingdom), analyzed between 1967 and 1971 the context.

Negative results from animal studies not published

The researchers were able to detect a statistically significant decrease in serum triglycerides in rats with high sugar consumption even at that time. The studies also indicated that sugar intake is associated with increased levels of beta-glucuronidase, an enzyme that is considered a potential risk factor for human bladder cancer. The SRF then completed the research project without publishing the results, report the scientists of the University of California.

Also to evaluate sugar as a potential carcinogen?

The sugar industry did not disclose the results of the animal studies, which provided evidence some 50 years ago that the risk of CHD is higher for sucrose (sugar) than for starch and that sugar should be considered a potential carcinogen the reproach of the researchers. "The influence of the gut microbiota on the different effects of sucrose and starch on blood lipids and the influence of carbohydrate quality on beta-glucuronidase and cancer activity deserve further attention," emphasize the US scientists. (Fp)