Sweetened Beverages and Cardiovascular Disease in Rats

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB) has increasingly been associated with negative health outcomes including overweight, obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease and stroke. As a result, one strategy that has been suggested is to substitute artificially-sweetened beverages (ASB) for SSB under the premise that this will result in improved health outcomes. Unfortunately, not only are there few data to support that health is improved by ASB, but recent prospective cohort studies suggest that those who consume ASB are also at increased risk for the same negative consequences. This counterintuitive effect may occur because ASB interfere with basic learning processes that normally contribute to the regulation of food intake, body weight maintenance, and blood glucose homeostasis. In fact, short-term studies using a rat model have demonstrated that animals given ASB show increased weight gain and adiposity along with hyperglycemia. The goal of the proposed work is to determine whether long-term exposure to either SSB or ASB is causally linked to changes in metabolic or cardiovascular function using novel 4D ultrasound technology which permits repeated, longitudinal analysis of cardiovascular dynamics in vivo in a rat model to identify the temporal characteristics and mechanisms by which beverage consumption contributes to overweight, obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.