Does aspartame have teratogenic effects?/nBackground: A woman in her ninth week of pregnancy has ea

Fråga: Does aspartame have teratogenic effects? Background: A woman in her ninth week of pregnancy has eaten food containing the sweetening agent aspartame. She does not know how much. She is now concerned about whether it could have a negative effect on the fetus.

Sammanfattning: It is clear that aspartame-sweetened products taken during pregnancy will not result in a teratogenic risk to the fetus in normal, healthy women. However, in mothers with phenylketonuria, there is a risk to the fetus so these women should be cautious of their intake of aspartame-sweetened products. In this present case, the woman is not known to have phenylketonuria so there is no risk to the fetus.

Svar: A question about aspartame during pregnancy has previously been answered in Drugline (1). According to this document, it was determined that aspartame did not cause any teratogenic effects.

An updated Medline search did reveal one abstract from 1995 which determined that aspartame administered in high doses to pregnant rats did not affect the glutamatergic neurotransmission in the cerebral cortex or hippocampus. The results concluded that perinatal exposure to high doses of aspartame did not have any negative effects on the weaning rats (2).

According to one handbook (3), it showed that high doses of aspartame taken by a pregnant woman with PKU (phenylketonuria) could result in malformations to the fetus. Phenylketonuria is a condition in which the person lacks the ability to metabolise phenylalanine resulting in high plasma levels of phenylalanine. Phenylalanine is a substance which is concentrated on the fetal side of the placenta. Therefore, since aspartame is a phenylalanine-containing product, too much aspartame would result in increased levels of phenylalanine. However, this is the only condition that has proven that high doses of aspartame could cause malformations. This book also states that a normal pregnant woman who ingests aspartame will not cause any risk to the fetus.