SOMERVILLE, Mass., Aug. 20 (Nationwide Times) — For people who regularly drink soda, sweetened lemonade, sports drinks or other sugar-sweetened beverages, a new U.S. study offers a reason to consider cutting back. But the finding does not mean that a daily sugary drink makes stomach cancer likely for any one person.
Researchers found that people who consumed at least one sugar-sweetened beverage each day had 2.45 times the incidence of gastric cancer as people who consumed fewer than one serving per month. The study was published in Gastro Hep Advances and was led by researchers at the Mass General Brigham Cancer Institute.
The researchers described the result as an association, not proof that sugary drinks cause cancer. Andrew T. Chan, the study’s senior author and a gastroenterologist and epidemiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and Mass General Brigham, said the study could not establish cause and effect.
What did the study examine?
The analysis included 112,284 participants from two long-running U.S. studies: the Nurses’ Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study. Data covered several decades, from 1986 through 2022, according to summaries of the research.
The analysis recorded 278 cases of gastric cancer during that period. That total represents about 0.25% of all participants, although the study materials do not provide the absolute cancer risk for each beverage-consumption group. As a result, the 2.45-times figure should not be read as meaning that 2.45% of daily sugary-drink consumers developed stomach cancer.
The study examined sugar-sweetened beverages including carbonated drinks, punch, lemonade and sports drinks. Other summaries of the study also identified regular soda, energy drinks and juice with added sugar as examples.
What does “2.45 times higher risk” mean?
The figure is a relative comparison between two groups: people who reported at least one sugar-sweetened beverage per day and people who reported fewer than one serving per month. It does not show the chance that an individual person will develop stomach cancer.
The study did not provide enough information to calculate the absolute difference in risk between those groups. The 278 cases were the total number recorded across the full study population and period, not the number among daily drinkers.
The researchers adjusted their analysis for other potential risk factors, according to Mass General Brigham. However, because the research was observational, differences between people who consumed sugary drinks and those who rarely consumed them could help explain the result. Chan said more research is needed to determine whether the connection is causal.
Was the association the same for everyone?
The association was reported among both women and men. Among women in the Nurses’ Health Study, consuming more than one sugar-sweetened beverage per day was associated with a 3.04-fold higher incidence of gastric cancer than very rare consumption.
The study also found that higher total fructose intake was associated with greater gastric-cancer incidence. The results do not establish whether the association was caused specifically by beverages, fructose, a broader dietary pattern or another related factor.
What about diet drinks?
The study found no association between higher consumption of artificially sweetened beverages and increased gastric-cancer incidence after adjustment for other factors. The researchers defined those drinks as low-calorie carbonated beverages.
That finding does not show that artificially sweetened drinks reduce cancer risk. It means only that the analysis did not find an increased incidence associated with them.
What should people take from the finding?
The study adds to research examining how diet may relate to cancer, but it does not establish that a daily sugary drink will cause stomach cancer. The researchers also did not calculate a personal cancer forecast or recommend that a particular person change treatment.
For everyday decisions, the clearest distinction is between an association and a proven cause. The study suggests that frequent sugar-sweetened beverage consumption was linked with higher stomach-cancer incidence in these U.S. cohorts. It does not show that occasional consumption carries the same association, and it does not show that avoiding sugary drinks eliminates the risk.
The findings were reported by Mass General Brigham researchers in “Association between sugar-sweetened and artificially sweetened beverage intake and gastric cancer incidence,” published in Gastro Hep Advances.
