We already know sugary drinks are not good for us. That has not stopped most people from drinking them, often every day.
Figures suggest that about two thirds of American adults consume at least one sugary drink each day, and most children in the United States do the same.
That daily habit could raise cancer risk in a significant way, according to new research.
In an analysis published in Gastro Hep Advances, researchers found that people who consumed at least one sugary drink a day had about 2.45 times the odds of developing stomach cancer, compared with people who never drank them.
“This is the first study to demonstrate an association between sugary drink consumption and gastric cancer in a U.S. population,” said lead author Andrew T. Chan, a gastroenterologist at Massachusetts General Hospital.
“Gastric cancer is the fifth leading cause of cancer death worldwide, but we knew very little about how diet might contribute to this cancer.”
The links between gastric cancer and sugary drinks were not settled until now, but the negative health effects of these beverages are not in doubt.
The data connect sugary drinks to more than 180,000 deaths a year worldwide, a higher risk of type 2 diabetes, obesity, and more.
They have already been associated with cancer as well, including breast cancer, liver cancer, and colorectal cancer, among other forms of the disease.
Scientists had already asked whether sugary drinks were linked to gastric cancer, but the results stayed inconclusive, perhaps because of limited data.
To widen the picture, Chan’s team gathered information from two large studies, the Nurses’ Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study, covering more than 112,000 participants in total.
In those studies, participants filled out questionnaires every two years, reporting their diet (including information on sugary drinks such as sodas, punch, lemonade, and sports drinks), along with lifestyle factors, medical history, and disease outcomes.
Between 1986 and 2022, among the 112,284 people involved in the studies, 278 cases of gastric cancer were documented.
Overall, people who consumed at least one sugary drink a day (defined as an 8-ounce serving, or 237 ml) had more than twice the odds (2.45 times) of developing gastric cancer compared with people who did not drink them, after accounting for potential confounding risk factors.
The risk was elevated in both men and women. Women consuming at least one sugary drink a day had about three times the risk of developing gastric cancer, while men had about twice the risk, in both cases compared with people who did not consume sugary drinks.
Despite plenty of concern about the effects of artificial sweeteners on the body, and some widely publicized suggestions that they could be carcinogenic, the researchers identified no association here between artificially sweetened drinks and gastric cancer incidence.
Of course, this kind of observational study can only show correlations in the data, and does not demonstrate any cause and effect.
In other words, one cannot conclude that sugary drink consumption directly led these people to develop gastric cancer, because other factors may have contributed to the disease.
Other limits of the study include the researchers having limited information on Helicobacter pylori infection, a bacterium that infects the stomach and a known risk factor for gastric cancer, and incomplete records on the full health and family histories of some participants related to gastric cancer.
As for how sugary drinks might potentially cause gastric cancer in the body, that fell outside the scope of this study, but the researchers say it is a question that should be pursued further.
“Several underlying mechanisms have been proposed, including weight gain, insulin resistance, an imbalance of steroid hormones, inflammation, DNA damage, and dysbiosis,” the study authors explain.
“However, the precise mechanism of the carcinogenic effects of sugary drinks has not yet been studied. Future studies are needed to confirm these findings as well as to examine the potential biological mechanisms involved.”
The findings are published in Gastro Hep Advances.
Source: Article365