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Metabolism and Disposition of Erythritol after Oral Administration to Rats¹

Department of Nutrition, Faculty of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1, Hongo, Bunkyoku, Tokyo, Japan 113

The metabolism and disposition of erythritol was studied using [¹⁴C]erythritol in rats. When [¹⁴C]erythritol was administered orally at a dose of 0.1 g/kg body wt to male rats, only 6% of the total radioactivity was excreted as expired ¹⁴CO₂ and 88% was excreted in the urine within 24 h. The excreted metabolite in the urine consisted of a single component identified as intact [¹⁴C]erythritol. The excretion of ¹⁴CO₂ and the incorporation ratios of radioactivity into tissues increased with the oral dosage. After rats were given an intravenous injection of [¹⁴C]erythritol, 1% was excreted as ¹⁴CO₂ and >94% was excreted in the urine as intact [¹⁴C]erythritol. The excretion of ¹⁴CO₂ within 24 h was increased to 10% when [¹⁴C]erythritol was administered to rats that had been adapted to erythritol by feeding a diet containing 10% erythritol for 2 wk. When [¹⁴C]erythritol was incubated in vitro with the cecal contents from rats adapted to erythritol, >20% was fermented to ¹⁴CO₂ and 60% to short-chain fatty acids in 6 h. These results indicate that most orally administered erythritol was excreted in the urine without any degradation and that the remainder was transferred to the lower intestine and fermented by microbes.

KEY WORDS: • erythritol • sweetener • energy • absorption • rats

¹ A partial report of this work was presented at the International Symposium on Caloric Evaluation of Carbohydrates, January 11–12, 1990, Kyoto, Japan [Noda, K. The fate and availability of erythritol in rats; and Oku, T. The erythritol balance study and evaluation of its metabolizable energy.].

² To whom correspondence and requests for reprints should be addressed at: Omiya Research Lab., Nikken Chemicals Co., LTD, 346, 1-Chome, Kitabukuro, Omiya, Saitama, Japan 330.

Manuscript received 11 April 1991. Revision accepted 2 January 1992.