Study links soft drinks to pancreatic cancer

Drinking sweetened fizzy drinks a couple of times a week raises the risk of pancreatic disease.

People who drink a lot of fizzy soft drinks have a higher risk of pancreatic cancer, an uncommon but deadly cancer, researchers have reported. People who drank juice instead of fizzy drinks did not have the same risk, according to a study of 60,000 people in Singapore.

Sugar may be to blame, but people who drink a lot of fizzy drinks also tend to have other bad habits, said Mark Pereira of the University of Minnesota.

The high levels of sugar in fizzy drinks may raise insulin levels in the body, which may help cancer cells grow, Pereira said. Insulin, made in the pancreas, helps the body process sugar.

Writing in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, Pereira and colleagues said they followed 60,524 men and women in the Singapore Chinese Health Study for 14 years. In that time, 140 of them developed pancreatic cancer. Those who drank two or more soft drinks a week had an 87 percent higher risk of pancreatic cancer.

Singapore is a wealthy country with good health care, where favourite pastimes are eating and shopping, so the findings may apply to the United States as well. But in Singapore drinking fizzy drinks also goes with other habits, such as smoking and eating red meat, which the study could not fully account for. Other studies have linked pancreatic cancer to red meat, especially grilled meat.

Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest cancers, with 230,000 cases worldwide each year. In the United States, 37,680 people are diagnosed with it and 34,290 die of it each year.