Soft drinks linked to increased risk of pancreatic cancer

Dwelling on the co-relation between consuming sugary drinks, and pancreatic cancer, the scientists believe that the dissolved sugar is quickly carried to the bloodstream, where its presence triggers blood sugar levels.

This in turn signals the pancreas to go into overdrive to pump out as much insulin as it can.

Study leader Dr Mark Pereira, from the School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota in the US, said, “The high levels of sugar in soft drinks may be increasing the level of insulin in the body, which we think contributes to pancreatic cancer cell growth.

“When you drink soft drinks, you get a burst of blood sugar. What the pancreas does in response almost immediately is secrete insulin to bring the blood sugar down.”

Relationship between pancreatic cancer, and soft drinks explored
The researchers recruited 60,500 men, and women in the Singapore Chinese Healthy Study. The participants were tracked over 14 years. During that period 140 people developed invasive pancreatic cancer.

At the onset of the study, the subjects were questioned on their soft drink consumption. After 14 years, the researchers noted that the participants drinking two or more soft drinks per week had 87 percent increased risk of pancreatic cancer as opposed to those who abstained from them.

Outcome of the study
The researchers also observed that despite taking into account factors like smoking, obesity, diabetes, red meat intake, coffee consumption, the results remained consistent.

However, no connection was found between drinking fruit juice, and risk of pancreatic cancer.

Jessica Harris, from the charity Cancer Research UK, said, "Although this study included a lot of people, very few of them developed pancreatic cancer so it is difficult to know if soft drinks do increase the risk of pancreatic cancer, or whether the results are just down to chance.

"Also, people who drank lots of fizzy drinks in this study were more likely to be unhealthy in other ways, like smoking, eating more calories, and being less active, so it is difficult to separate the effects of all of these things."

The research is published in the journal Cancer, Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevent.

Pancreatic cancer
Pancreatic cancer is an aggressive form of cancer. It is often is called a "silent" disease because the symptoms are not detected early on, and initially ignored.

By the time the cancer is diagnosed, the disease has spread to distant sites in the body. Pancreatic cancer is also relatively resistant to medical treatment, and the only potential cure is surgery.