ReviewAdvances in nutrition (Bethesda, Md.)2024
An Overview of Reviews on the Association of Low Calorie Sweetener Consumption With Body Weight and Adiposity.
Review in Advances in nutrition (Bethesda, Md.), 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Artificial sweeteners and risk of cardiometabolic outcomes and mortality: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Nutrition research and practice · 2026Review
- Review
- Low- or No-Energy Sweeteners and Body Weight Management: Dissecting a "Minor" Effect.Obesity reviews : an official journal of the International Association for the Study of Obesity · 2025Review
- Non-nutritive Sweeteners and Health: Reconciling Evidence and Interrogating Guideline Disconnects.Advances in nutrition (Bethesda, Md.) · 2024Article
- An Overview of Reviews on the Association of Low Calorie Sweetener Consumption With Body Weight and Adiposity.Advances in nutrition (Bethesda, Md.) · 2024Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundNumerous systematic reviews (SR) and meta-analyses (MA) on low calorie sweeteners (LCS) have been published in recent years, concluding that LCS have beneficial, neutral, or detrimental effects on various health outcomes, depending on the review.
objectivesThe objective of this overview of reviews was to determine how the methodologies of SR investigating the association between LCS consumption and body weight (BW) influence their findings and whether MA results can provide a consistent estimated effect.
methodsSystematic searches of PubMed, Scopus, and Cochrane Library were conducted in November 2022 to identify SR of randomized controlled trials (RCT) or non-randomized studies (NRS) investigating the association between LCS consumption and BW. The methods, MA results, and conclusions were extracted from each eligible SR.
resultsOf the 985 search results, 20 SR evaluated the association between LCS and BW, drawing from publications of 75 RCT, 42 prospective cohort studies, and 10 cross-sectional studies. There was a considerable lack of overlap of studies included within each SR attributed, in part, to the inclusion of studies based on design; thus, each SR synthesized results from distinctly different studies. Evidence synthesis methods were heterogeneous and often opaque, making it difficult to determine why results from certain studies were excluded or why disparate results were observed between SR.
conclusionsSR investigating the effect of LCS on BW implement different methodologies to answer allegedly the same question, drawing from a different set of heterogeneous studies, ignoring the basic assumptions required for MA, resulting in disparate results and conclusions. Previous MA show the large effects of study design, which results in inconsistent estimates of the effect of LCS on BW between MA of RCT and NRS. Given the availability of long-term RCT, these studies should be the basis of determining causal relationships (or lack thereof) between LCS and BW. This trial was registered at PROSPERO as CRD42022351200.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.