Search Here

A new study has linked the consumption of artificially sweetened drinks and pregnant mothers to preterm births.

The joint study by Norwegian and Swedish researchers says that preterm births are dangerous and need to be stopped since they may lead to early death, diseases in infancy and childhood as well as long-term disability.

For the study, the researchers at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health collected and analyzed data from the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study (MoBa) to find the causes of preterm births.

Although the exact causes of preterm births are still unclear, a link between BMI and diet have been found.

"In a similar Danish cohort, it was reported that artificially-sweetened, but not sugar-sweetened soft drinks were associated with a small increase in the risk of preterm birth. We have studied the same data in MoBa, and find that for those women drinking more than one daily serving of sugar- or artificially-sweetened drinks, there was a small increased risk of preterm delivery (before week 37 in pregnancy)," said researchers at  Norwegian Institute of Public Health.

Apparently, the study revealed that those whomen who consumed higher amounts of artificially-sweetened drinks were more likely to have a higher BMI, lesser education, they tend to be daily smokers or to be single women.

The study did considered factors such as smoking, young age and high BMI that could explain preterm birth, but other similar factors could still be involved.

For the study, the researchers studied 60,761 pregnant women who were given three questionnaires to complete during pregnancy, which contained questions pertaining to their lifestyle and diet.

"Although the Norwegian data confirmed the Danish findings regarding an association between artificially-sweetened drinks and preterm delivery, we cannot at the present stage claim that artificial sweeteners have a causal relationship to preterm birth," the press release states.

" While the Danish study only found an increased risk for artificially-sweetened beverages, we also found an increased risk for preterm birth for sugar-sweetened beverages. This difference gives reason for caution. More studies are needed, ideally as controlled trials, but in general, daily intake of sweetened drinks should be avoided," they added.