The metabolism of alcohol alongside sugars has been shown to cause short-term and long-term health risks. Due to this, societal trends have shifted towards adding non-nutritive sweeteners (NNS) to alcoholic beverages to prevent veisalgia. However, limited data exists on the impacts of NNS when mixed with alcohol. Alcohol is a known diuretic which causes renal taxing to be raised during periods of drinking. Sucrose and sucralose are both water soluble and enter the blood stream to be filtered through the kidney. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the different outcomes in renal kidney function as a result of diets which mix alcohol with sugar or NNS. An experiment consisting of 6-week-old, female C57BL/6J mice were randomly assigned to one of six treatment groups: Water, Sugar, Sucralose, Ethanol, Sugar/Ethanol, or Sucralose/Ethanol. Sweeteners were mixed with water or 10% EtOH at a concentration that reflects human daily consumption level of 0.1g/L for sucralose and 100g/L for sucrose. These diets were administered for a period of 12 weeks. Multiple colorimetric assays were conducted on samples of the kidney tissue. Antioxidant levels were assessed using reduced Glutathione, superoxide dismutase, and catalase kits. Oxidative stress levels were measured using a TBARS kit. Serum was collected for analysis of blood urea nitrogen (BUN) and creatinine levels. Analysis of serum showed a reduction in BUN in the Sugar/Ethanol group. Other results are forthcoming. This abstract was presented at the American Physiology Summit 2026 and is only available in HTML format. There is no downloadable file or PDF version. The Physiology editorial board was not involved in the peer review process.
Thibeault et al. (Fri,) studied this question.