Scientists have talked a lot about the health dangers of sugar and always will. As an integral part of our diet, sugar is in fact linked to several health problems. Anyone who consumes too much of it significantly increases their risk of overweight, obesity, diabetes and even heart disease. It's no wonder that more and more people are using theirsReduce sugar consumption or avoid it completely. But it's not just adults who are exposed to such risks of complications, as children are among the biggest consumers of added sugar. However, less is known about how high sugar consumption in childhood affects brain development.
Researchers at the University of Georgia in collaboration with a research group at the University of Southern California have shown in a rodent model that daily consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages in adolescence impairs performance on a learning and memory task in adulthood. The study was published March 31, 2021 in the journal Translational Psychiatry.
The focus is on the connection between sugary drinks and the hippocampus, the brain region that is crucial for learning and memory. To reach this conclusion, scientists conducted an experiment with teenage mice. In addition to their usual food, the rodents were also given an 11 percent sugar solution, which is almost the same as the sugary drinks sold in supermarkets. To evaluate the effects of sugar on memory, the researchers subjected the mice to two tests with different memory tasks. The results showed that sugar consumption at an early age appears to selectively impair learning and memory in the hippocampus.
The research team further showed that changes in intestinal flora could be the key to sugar-induced memory impairment. To better identify the mechanism by which the bacteria affected memory and learning, the researchers experimentally increased Parabacteroides levels in the gut microbiome of rats that stillnever consumed sugarhad. These animals showed impairments in both hippocampus-dependent and hippocampus-independent memory tasks.
“Sugar at an early age increased Parabacteroides levels, and the higher the Parabacteroides levels, the worse the animals performed on the task,” said Emily Noble, an assistant professor in the UGA College of Family and Consumer Sciences, who was the first author of the paper was involved. "We found that the bacteria alone were enough to impair memory in the same way as sugar, but they also impaired other types of memory functions."
Noble said future research is needed to better understand how this gut-brain signaling works.
“The question now is how these bacterial populations in the gut alter brain development,” Noble said. “Once we determine how gut bacteria affect brain development, we will learn what type of internal environment the brain needs to grow healthily.”
Reference:Translational Psychiatry (2021); Gut microbial taxa elevated by dietary sugar disrupt memory function
