This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Lewis D. Stegink, PhD; Wilma L. Krause, MD
University of Iowa College of Medicine Iowa City

JAMA. 1987;258(2):205-206.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.—

Dr Pardridge¹ has criticized the review of aspartame safety issues published in JAMA² and suggested that adverse effects may arise from the phenylalanine content of aspartame. We disagree with Dr Pardridge's contention that available data show a potential for adverse effects at normal levels of aspartame use.

To support his thesis, Dr Pardridge claims that data of Levy and Waisbren³ (correlating infant IQ with maternal plasma phenylalanine concentrations in hyperphenylalaninemia) show a 10.5-point drop in IQ of children per 250-µmol/L increment in maternal plasma phenylalanine concentration. Dr Pardridge claims that this effect is linear and applicable down to maternal plasma phenylalanine concentrations of 200 µmol/L or lower. Dr Pardridge ignores the fact that when data correlating IQ with normal blood phenylalanine concentrations (40 to 120 µmol/L) are added to the graph, the plot is clearly biphasic and shows a threshold effect. Indeed, Levy and . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?