A new study found that people who consumed two or more soft drinks (defined as sugar-sweetened carbonated beverages) a week, had a nearly two-fold higher risk of developing pancreatic cancer; the researchers suggested regular consumption of sweetened beverages could raise insulin levels and thereby fuel the growth of pancreatic cancer cells.
You can read about the study online in a paper published in the February issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.
Senior author Dr. Mark Pereira, associate professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and colleagues, followed more than 60,000 Singapore-based men and women for over a decade and found that compared to those who did not consume soft drinks, those who had two or more a week had two times the risk of developing pancreatic cancer.
They found no such link for fruit juice consumption.
Pereira told the press that while the population they studied was based in Singapore, the results were likely to be equally applicable to the United States and other developed countries:
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"Singapore is a wealthy country with excellent health care. Favorite pastimes are eating and shopping, so the findings should apply to other western countries," said Pereira.
