Study Ties Soft-Drink Intake to Pancreatic Cancer
Feb-09-2010

Drinking two or more soft drinks a week may nearly double a person's risk of developing pancreatic cancer, researchers are warning.

Cancer of the pancreas, the disease that killed actor Patrick Swayze last year, is one of the most rapidly fatal tumours in adults; only six per cent of people are alive five years after their diagnosis.

The pancreas makes insulin, and scientists believe high concentrations of insulin can drive the growth of pancreatic cancer cells.

Eating too much sugar increases insulin levels in the body, and one of the leading sources of added sugar in our diets is pop.

The new study, by researchers from the University of Minnesota, was based on more than 60,000 men and women in the Singapore Chinese Healthy Study who were followed for 14 years. During that time, 140 people developed invasive pancreatic cancer.

At the start of the study, people were asked to report how often they drank one glass of pop. A glass was considered 237 millilitres, or about the equivalent of one cup.

Those who reported drinking two or more soft drinks per week had an 87-per-cent increased risk of pancreatic cancer compared to those who didn't drink soft drinks. The pop drinkers were averaging five drinks per week.

The finding held after researchers took smoking, obesity, diabetes, red meat intake, coffee consumption and a "whole myriad" of other nutritional factors into account, said lead author Noel Mueller, now a research associate at the Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington.

There was no significant association between juice consumption and risk of pancreatic cancer.

Other studies have looked at the association between pop and pancreatic cancer, but the results haven't been consistent. One of the strengths of the new study is its size.

However, there were only 140 cases of pancreatic cancer, so the finding was based on a relatively small number of cases.

Mueller also said caution needs to be taken when extrapolating the findings from the Singapore Chinese study to a western population. But other studies in American and European populations have found similar associations.

A study of 88,794 U.S. nurses and 49,364 male health professionals found that women who consumed three or more sugar-sweetened drinks a week had a 57-per-cent greater risk of pancreatic cancer than did women who drank no more than one soft drink per month. In that study, there was no association between sweetened soft drinks and pancreatic cancer among men.

But a Swedish study involving nearly 78,000 women and men reported in 2006 that high consumption of sugar and high-sugar foods - including soft drinks - was associated with a greater risk of pancreatic cancer in both sexes.

The new study is published this week in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.

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