Worldwide, approximately 20 million people suffer from inflammatory bowel disease (IBD); in France, in 2015, the Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis concerned respectively 127,000 and 85,000 patients, mostly women.
While science now knows that chronic bowel disease (IBD) depends in part on genetic factors, environmental risk factors remain poorly understood.
Precisely: a team from the Cochin Institute (Inserm / CNRS / University of Paris) studied the impact of diet on the risk of developing IBD. The French researchers looked more specifically at carboxymethylcellulose (CMC), a synthetic emulsifier that is added to processed foods to improve texture and shelf life.
Used since the 1960s by the food industry, carboxymethylcellulose (CMC) is found in certain butters, in certain infant foods, in certain ice creams, in certain wines… On the labels, the CMC is hidden behind the code E466.
CMC (E466) promotes abdominal pain and bloating
The French researchers worked with a group of healthy volunteers. These were divided into two groups: for two weeks, participants in group 1 consumed a healthy, strictly additive-free diet, while participants in group 2 were allowed a CMC-enriched diet.
At the end of the experiment, the scientists found that in the volunteers of group 2, “the composition of bacteria present in the intestine was modified, with a marked decrease in the quantity of certain species known to play a beneficial role in human health, such as Faecalibacterium prausnitzii”. In addition to these changes in their microbiota, the volunteers in group 2 suffered from abdominal pain and bloating.
“These results confirm the data from animal studies and suggest that long-term consumption of this additive could negatively impact the intestinal microbiota and therefore promote chronic inflammatory diseases as well as metabolic dysregulation in humans.“conclude the researchers, who published their work in the specialized journal Gastroenterology.
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