August 13, 2024- New Cleveland Clinic research shows that consuming foods with erythritol, a popular artificial sweetener, increases risk of cardiovascular events such as heart attack and stroke. The findings, from a new intervention study in healthy volunteers, show erythritol made platelets (a type of blood cell) more active, which can raise the risk of blood clots. Sugar (glucose) did not have this effect.
Published in Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology, the research adds to increasing evidence that erythritol may not be as safe as currently classified by food regulatory agencies and should be reevaluated as an ingredient. The study was conducted by a team of Cleveland Clinic researchers as part of a series of investigations on the physiological effects of common sugar substitutes.
The current research builds on the team’s previous study, published last year in Nature Medicine, which revealed that cardiac patients with high erythritol levels were twice as likely to experience a major cardiac event in the following three years compared to those with low levels. The study also discovered that adding erythritol to patients’ blood or platelets increased clot formation. These findings were confirmed by pre-clinical studies.