The Impact of the Physiological Response to Sugar on Brain Activity and Behavior

Appetitive Behavior Clinical Trial

Official title: The Impact of the Physiological Response to Sugar on Brain Activity and Behavior

Status Recruiting

Clinical Trial Summary

The goal of this pilot study is to test the feasibility of assessing how biological factors and chemical properties of sugars may influence metabolism and food reward in humans. The main questions it aims to answer are:

• Can differences in appetitive responses and neural activations to sucrose (table sugar) and its chemical components (glucose and fructose) be measured and quantified?

• Are there detectable differences in how combinations of sugars and non-nutritive sweeteners commonly found in our food supply influence appetitive responses and neural activation?

This study is a crossover design, meaning every participant will complete every condition. Participants will consume beverages containing sucrose, glucose, or fructose, which are each novelly flavored, 6 times within a week. During one of the consumption times, energy expenditure, carbohydrate oxidation, and blood glucose will be measured in the lab before and for 2 hours after consumption. After participants have consumed each condition, they will undergo a tasting task in the MRI scanner, neural responses to receipt of the beverages are measured. Another group of participants will undergo the same study design but with sucrose, high fructose corn syrup, or sucrose + non-nutritive sweetener as the conditions.

Clinical Trial Description

Prior studies in humans indicate that while energy expenditure response is similar after consumption of equal amounts of fructose, glucose, and sucrose (a dimer of glucose + fructose), carbohydrate oxidation and blood glucose responses differ. Elevated carbohydrate oxidation responses appear to be driven by the presence of fructose, and elevated blood glucose responses appear to be driven by the presence of glucose. Prior work also suggests that post-ingestive signals of glucose availability, measure specifically as blood glucose levels, intestinal glucose transporter activity, and carbohydrate oxidation rate, are all associated with elevated brain response to calorie-predictive flavor cues and reward learning of these flavor cues. However, in animal models, glucose has been shown to repeatedly and reliably condition these calorie-predictive learning responses, but fructose does not. Human work has indicated that oxidation of glucose is critical for these responses. Thus, it is unclear what roles fructose and glucose each play in conditioning reward responses and flavor-calorie learning. We hypothesize that fructose plays a synergistic role in enhancing flavor-calorie learning without itself conditioning the reward response. ;

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Appetitive Behavior
• Food Preferences

• NCT number: NCT06015490
• Study type: Interventional
• Source: Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
• Contact: Alexandra DiFeliceantonio, PhD
• Phone: 540-526-2285
• Email: dife@vtc.vt.edu
• Status: Recruiting
• Phase: N/A
• Start date: September 1, 2023
• Completion date: December 20, 2024