A cancer researcher at Upstate Medical University has published research that shows a link between sugar alcohols found in sugar-free foods and low-calorie sweeteners and liver cancer.  

Andras Perl, a professor of medicine at Upstate Medical University since 1992, researches autoimmunity and cancer, and how to treat them.  

Perl said his latest findings began with an enzyme called transaldolase that some people lack because of a genetic defect.  

“I started to investigate what the enzyme does and discovered a number of cell processes that relate to metabolism, mitochondria, mitochondrial function, the genetic energy into a cell and cell proliferation, and many, many factors effect whether the enzyme is present or not,” Perl said.  

To further study it, he worked with mice that were deficient in the enzyme, which he found led them to develop liver disease and cancer.

Without transaldolase, sugar alcohols began to accumulate in its absence, Perl said.  

“So the sugar output was, in the absence of transaldolase, erythritol for example, over 200-fold in these mice,” he said.

Perl said that would increase in humans as well if they have a transaldolase deficiency, which is a genetic defect for some.  

When researchers inactivated another enzyme present, aldose reductase, sugar alcohols did not accumulate and there was no development of cancer, Perl explained.

Perl said it is not yet known how much of those sugar alcohols a person would have to consume for it to cause cancer.

“I wouldn’t say 100% that everyone who consumed these sweeteners will develop cancer as a result, but I’m sure some people will, we just don’t know the percentage,” he said.

Erythritol and other sugar substitutes are used as sweeteners in products labeled as sugar-free, said registered dietitian Emily Tills.  

“Foods that commonly have sugar alcohols in them are going to be diet products, some protein bars that are sugar-free, sugar-free gum, the sugar-free coffee creamers, diet sodas,” Tills said.  

Tills recommended limiting the intake of these types of products, and instead indulging occasionally in their sugar-filled options.

“A lot of that stuff where we have that sugar-free alternative are things we probably shouldn’t be having a lot of anyways,” she said.