Food dyes add a splash of color to most of the items we eat, but chronic exposure to a specific colorant may very well have impacts on our gut health, a recent study has found.

For his or her study, published Tuesday in Nature Communications, researchers checked out the potential impacts of exposure to Allura Red synthetic colorant on gut health.

Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBDs), Crohn’s Disease and ulcerative colitis are long-term disorders that affect the tissues of the digestive tract. There may be growing evidence that folks’s weight loss plan could also be influencing the event of IBDs, with some studies showing how “high levels” of additives may alter the gut microbiome and promote colitis, the researchers said.

Despite a major increase in the usage of synthetic colorants previously 50 years, it remains to be “poorly understood” how they affect intestinal inflammation.

“Allura Red AC (AR) is a highly common synthetic colorant; nonetheless, little is thought about its impact on colitis,” the researchers wrote. “Amongst many azo dyes, Allura Red AC (FD&C Red 40 or E129) (AR) is probably the most widely used colorant in lots of countries and will be present in commonly consumed dietary products geared toward children (e.g., breakfast cereals, beverages, and confectioneries).”

To learn the way it could be impacting gut health, the researchers used animal models to see the impact of chronic or intermittent exposure to AR. They found the mice that were chronically exposed to AR for 12 weeks — at levels relative to people’s usual exposure — actually developed mild colitis.

“The present data suggest that AR enhances the susceptibility to colitis,” the researchers wrote.

“This study demonstrates significant harmful effects of Allura Red on gut health and identifies gut serotonin as a critical factor mediating these effects,” study senior creator Waliul Khan, of McMaster University, said in a news release. “These findings have vital implications within the prevention and management of gut inflammation.”

In addition they found that exposure to AR in formative years may result in “heightened susceptibility to colitis.” This is very important since many food manufacturers use such synthetic colorants of their products to make them more appealing to children. Hence, children could also be at higher risk of exposure than adults.

The researchers didn’t find increased susceptibility with intermittent exposure to AR. Further, the increased susceptibility was not observed in mice that weren’t engineered to develop the condition, reported Recent Atlas. This might mean the trigger occurs in those that are already at risk of it, whether as a result of their lifestyle or genetics.

Still, the outcomes were “striking and alarming,” said Khan, noting the potential of the dye being a trigger for IBS.

“This research is a major advance in alerting the general public on the potential harms of food dyes that we devour each day,” he said.

“Collectively, we show that chronic, but not the intermittent exposure to AR enhances colitis susceptibility…” the researchers wrote. “(F)uture studies are essential to discover similar effects in humans.”