Soft Drink Doubles Pancreatic Cancer Risk: Study
Soft Drink Doubles Pancreatic Cancer Risk: Study
A team of international researchers claim to have found a link between soft drink and pancreatic cancer.
Scientists from the University of Minnesota and the National University of Singapore have found that consuming two or more soft drinks a week can nearly double the risk of developing the deadly cancer.
The study was conducted in Singapore and followed more than 60,000 men and women over 14 years.
Of those, 140 people died from pancreatic cancer.
Dr Mark Pereira from the University of Minnesota believes there could be a link to the amount of soft drink consumed.
"We found that those consuming soft drinks ... on a nearly daily basis ... their risk was about two, almost two times greater for dying of pancreatic cancer compared to the Chinese men and women in the study who were not consuming those beverages," he said.
Dr Pereira says his research took into account other factors such as smoking, age, weight and intake of red meat.
He says the high levels of sugar in soft drinks boosted insulin levels, which can increase the risk of pancreatic cancer.
"We're finding more studies including ours that suggest that this could be a real phenomenon," he said.
"And if it is, we think that it might be explained by the effect that these beverages have on blood sugar and the hormone insulin coming from the pancreas, the site of the cancer.
"Lots of insulin is secreted when you consume these beverages in high volumes and insulin has been shown to promote the growth of cancer cells."
The American Beverage Association has rejected the findings. It says leading scientific bodies such as the National Cancer Institute still do not list soft drinks as risk factors for pancreatic cancer.
But Dr Pereira stands by his research and says it shows similar findings to previous studies done in Sweden and the US.
"The evidence is accumulating, it is becoming consistent and it makes sense biologically but not overly convincing yet," he said.
"We need more research on this topic and we need to look more at some other beverages as well."
Dr Pereira says his research shows 100 per cent fruit juice does not increase the risk of pancreatic cancer.
"That seems to make sense to us because it is served in small portions and it has less sugar and it has natural sugar ... fruit juice doesn't increase the blood sugar and the blood insulin as much as the soft drinks do," he said.
Cancer Council Australia CEO Professor Ian Olver says further research is needed.
"The research from the University of Minnesota shows an association between drinking soft drinks and getting pancreatic cancer but it can't demonstrate that one causes the other," he said.
Mr Olver is critical of the research method, which he says doesn't control two risk factors known to be associated with pancreatic cancer, smoking and eating red meat.
"I think that there needs to be further studies done to determine precisely why the association was found, was it the soft drink and the sugar or was it something else that they were doing as well?"
The research is published in a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.
Sumber: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/02/09/2814559.htm
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