Research Links Common Sweetener (Aspartame) with Anxiety and with Transgenerational Transmission of Effect

Florida State University (FSU) College of Medicine researchers have linked aspartame, an artificial sweetener found in nearly 5,000 diet foods and drinks, to anxiety-like behavior in mice. Along with producing anxiety in the mice who consumed aspartame, the effects extended up to two generations from the males exposed to the sweetener. The study is published on December 2, 2022 in the PNAS. The open-access article is titled “Transgenerational Transmission of Aspartame-Induced Anxiety and Changes in Glutamate-GABA Signaling and Gene Expression in the Amygdala.” “What this study is showing is we need to look back at the environmental factors, because what we see today is not only what’s happening today, but what happened two generations ago and maybe even longer,” said co-author Pradeep Bhide, PhD, the Jim and Betty Ann Rodgers Eminent Scholar Chair of Developmental Neuroscience in the Department of Biomedical Sciences at FSU.