Anti‐hyperglycemic effect of selected sugar alcohols (829.32)

In this study, we estimated the anti‐hyperglycemic effect of the most widely used seven sugar alcohols including xylitol, erythritol, maltitol, isomalt, mannitol, sorbitol, and inositol. Sugar alcohols, also known as polyols, are considered as sugar substitutes because they are contain low calories and some sugar alcohols do not raise blood glucose. However, there are few studies on the anti‐hyperglycemic activity of sugar alcohols. Therefore, we investigated inhibitory activity of sugar alcohols against rat intestinal α‐glucosidase, porcine pancreatic α‐amylase, and sucrase using in‐vitro . We also examined phenolic‐linked antioxidant activity, oxygen radical absorbance capacity (ORAC) to evaluate antioxidant activity of sugar alcohols. Among seven sugar alcohols xylitol had the highest α‐glucosidase inhibitory activity and maltitol had the highest sucrase inhibitory activity. These result indicated that some sugar alcohols exhibit considerable anti‐hyperglycemic activity with inhibitory activity about carbohydrate absorption‐linked enzymes such as α‐glucosidase and sucrase.