Plausible Biological Interactions of Low- and Non-Calorie Sweeteners with the Intestinal Microbiota: An Update of Recent Studies Plaza Díaz, Julio Pastor-Villaescusa, Belén Rueda Robles, Ascensión Abadía Molina, Francisco Ruiz Ojeda, Francisco Javier Nonnutritive sweeteners Sweetening agents Gut microbiota Julio Plaza-Díaz is part of the “UGR Plan Propio de Investigación 2016” and the “Excellence actions: Unit of Excellence on Exercise and Health (UCEES), University of Granada”. Francisco J. Ruiz-Ojeda and Belén Pastor-Villaescusa are supported by a grant to postdoctoral researchers at foreign universities and research centers from the “Fundación Alfonso Martín-Escudero”, Madrid, Spain. We are grateful to Belen Vazquez-Gonzalez for assistance with the illustration service. Sweeteners that are a hundred thousand times sweeter than sucrose are being consumed as sugar substitutes. The effects of sweeteners on gut microbiota composition have not been completely elucidated yet, and numerous gaps related to the effects of nonnutritive sweeteners (NNS) on health still remain. The NNS aspartame and acesulfame-K do not interact with the colonic microbiota, and, as a result, potentially expected shifts in the gut microbiota are relatively limited, although acesulfame-K intake increases Firmicutes and depletes Akkermansia muciniphila populations. On the other hand, saccharin and sucralose provoke changes in the gut microbiota populations, while no health effects, either positive or negative, have been described; hence, further studies are needed to clarify these observations. Steviol glycosides might directly interact with the intestinal microbiota and need bacteria for their metabolization, thus they could potentially alter the bacterial population. Finally, the effects of polyols, which are sugar alcohols that can reach the colonic microbiota, are not completely understood; polyols have some prebiotics properties, with laxative effects, especially in patients with inflammatory bowel syndrome. In this review, we aimed to update the current evidence about sweeteners’ effects on and their plausible biological interactions with the gut microbiota. 2020-06-15T07:57:06Z 2020-06-15T07:57:06Z 2020 journal article Plaza-Diaz, J., Pastor-Villaescusa, B., Rueda-Robles, A., Abadia-Molina, F., & Ruiz-Ojeda, F. J. (2020). Plausible Biological Interactions of Low-and Non-Calorie Sweeteners with the Intestinal Microbiota: An Update of Recent Studies. Nutrients, 12(4), 1153. [ doi:10.3390/nu12041153] http://hdl.handle.net/10481/62487 doi:10.3390/nu12041153 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/ open access Atribución 3.0 España MDPI