ArticlePLoS biology2017
Sugar industry sponsorship of germ-free rodent studies linking sucrose to hyperlipidemia and cancer: An historical analysis of internal documents.
Article in PLoS biology, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 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
10 citing papers in PubMed, 32 citations in OpenAlex.
- The sugar industry's efforts to manipulate research on fluoride effectiveness and toxicity: a ninety-year history.Environmental health : a global access science source · 2025Article
- Dynamics of combatting market-driven epidemics: Insights from U.S. reduction of cigarette, sugar, and prescription opioid consumption.PLOS global public health · 2024Review
- The science of spin: targeted strategies to manufacture doubt with detrimental effects on environmental and public health.Environmental health : a global access science source · 2021Article
- How can the integrity of occupational and environmental health research be maintained in the presence of conflicting interests?Environmental health : a global access science source · 2019Article
- Gut Microbiome: Profound Implications for Diet and Disease.Nutrients · 2019Review
- Perspective: Public Health Nutrition Policies Should Focus on Healthy Eating, Not on Calorie Counting, Even to Decrease Obesity.Advances in nutrition (Bethesda, Md.) · 2019Article
- Dietary Fructose Consumption and Triple-Negative Breast Cancer Incidence.Frontiers in endocrinology · 2019Review
- Added Sugar and Dental Caries in Children: A Scientific Update and Future Steps.Dental clinics of North America · 2019Review
- History of modern nutrition science-implications for current research, dietary guidelines, and food policy.BMJ (Clinical research ed.) · 2018Article
- The sugar industry's influence on policy.Science (New York, N.Y.) · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
In 1965, the Sugar Research Foundation (SRF) secretly funded a review in the New England Journal of Medicine that discounted evidence linking sucrose consumption to blood lipid levels and hence coronary heart disease (CHD). SRF subsequently funded animal research to evaluate sucrose's CHD risks. The objective of this study was to examine the planning, funding, and internal evaluation of an SRF-funded research project titled "Project 259: Dietary Carbohydrate and Blood Lipids in Germ-Free Rats," led by Dr. W.F.R. Pover at the University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom, between 1967 and 1971. A narrative case study method was used to assess SRF Project 259 from 1967 to 1971 based on sugar industry internal documents. Project 259 found a statistically significant decrease in serum triglycerides in germ-free rats fed a high sugar diet compared to conventional rats fed a basic PRM diet (a pelleted diet containing cereal meals, soybean meals, whitefish meal, and dried yeast, fortified with a balanced vitamin supplement and trace element mixture). The results suggested to SRF that gut microbiota have a causal role in carbohydrate-induced hypertriglyceridemia. A study comparing conventional rats fed a high-sugar diet to those fed a high-starch diet suggested that sucrose consumption might be associated with elevated levels of beta-glucuronidase, an enzyme previously associated with bladder cancer in humans. SRF terminated Project 259 without publishing the results. The sugar industry did not disclose evidence of harm from animal studies that would have (1) strengthened the case that the CHD risk of sucrose is greater than starch and (2) caused sucrose to be scrutinized as a potential carcinogen. The influence of the gut microbiota in the differential effects of sucrose and starch on blood lipids, as well as the influence of carbohydrate quality on beta-glucuronidase and cancer activity, deserve further scrutiny.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion 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 OpenQuestion graph.