Effect Dietary Fructose on Fructose Kinetics in Type 2 Diabetes

The prevalence and accompanying morbidity and mortality of obesity and type 2 diabetes (T2D) is increasing on a global scale. Unfortunately the underlying (patho)physiological mechanisms are only partially understood. A key step in the development of negative health effects of metabolic disease might be via dietary fructose metabolism and its accompanying aberrant metabolite production, in which our gut microbiota plays a crucial role.

By bypassing the normal glucose metabolism pathway, fructose plays a role in the development of metabolic disease such as diabetes en fatty liver disease. The mechanism of this effect is unclear and possibly plays in the observation of ethnic specific metabolic risk factors. That is, subjects of different ethnicties (for instance South-Asian Surinamese (SAS)) have a higher risk and worse trajectory of metabolic diseases than Caucasians. Since gut microbiota is altered between these two ethnicities, we hypothesize that aberreant fructose catabolism in patients of SAS descent results in production of specific (gut microbiota derived) metabolites such as ethanol. In this study, fructose metabolism will thus be studied in patients of SAS and Caucasian Dutch descent. To this end the investigators will examine (13C stable isotope based) fructose fluxes before and after randomizing subjects into a four-week high- or low fructose diet. This study aims to elucidate the physiological and microbial catabolism of fructose and possible differences between these two ethnicities.