Aspartame, a commonly used sweetener in thousands of everyday consumer products around the world for about 40 years, has been classified as “possibly carcinogenic”. This Friday, July 14 announcement from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the World Health Organization’s (WHO) agency responsible for listing the causes of cancer, has crucially fueled the controversy that has surrounded this chemical for decades.
Aspartame, also recognizable by the code “E951” on the back of the products, thus joins group “2B” of the classification set by the IARC, along with 322 other active ingredients with such diverse effects and origins as progestogen-based contraceptives, gasoline, chlordecone or aloe vera. This is the third level of severity, behind “probable” carcinogens such as red meat or glyphosate and substances known to cause human cancer, such as alcohol or tobacco.
In concrete terms, this means that the level of scientific evidence is currently not sufficient to definitively classify aspartame as a carcinogenic substance, but there are serious indications that this is the case. 25 independent experts reviewed a corpus of 1,300 scientific studies published on aspartame in recent years. Those studying the substance’s mechanisms of action in the body found evidence of oxidative stress, chronic inflammation or nutrient uptake, but were inconclusive as to its genotoxicity, ie its ability to produce irreversible damage to the genome.
Increased risk of liver cancer identified
As for the experiments carried out on animals, several studies, notably by the Ramazzini Institute in Italy, have shown that mice and rats that had consumed high doses of aspartame had an increased incidence of tumors. The evidence is considered “limited” by experts who believe that certain biases exist in this work.
Finally, three epidemiological studies conducted on large cohorts in Europe and the United States have found an association with an increased risk of liver cancer, particularly hepatocellular carcinoma, in regular consumers of artificially sweetened beverages. Here, too, the level of evidence was rated as “limited” due to the insufficient number of studies. “These results should be interpreted as a call to the research community to attempt to clarify and understand the carcinogenic risk that may or may not be associated with aspartame use,” commented Mary Schubauer-Berigan, acting director of the Monographs program the IARC.
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