Study: Daily sugary drinks increase liver cancer risk in specific women.
Women Who Drink Sugar-Sweetened Beverages Daily at Higher Risk of Liver Cancer and Chronic Liver Disease
A recent study conducted by Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Massachusetts has found that women who consume sugar-sweetened drinks on a daily basis have a higher risk of developing liver cancer and chronic liver disease.
The study analyzed data from nearly 98,786 postmenopausal women aged 50-79 years old who participated in the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) study from 1993 to 1998. The participants self-reported their consumption of soft drinks, fruit drinks (excluding fruit juice), and artificially sweetened drinks over a period of three years.
Over a median follow-up period of 20.9 years, the researchers observed the incidence of self-reported liver cancer and death due to chronic liver disease. The data was further verified through medical records or the National Death Index.
The authors of the study concluded that compared to consuming 3 or fewer servings of sugar-sweetened beverages per month, women who consumed 1 or more sugar-sweetened beverages per day had a higher incidence of liver cancer and death from chronic liver disease. They emphasized the need for future studies to confirm these findings and identify the biological pathways involved.
Specifically, the results showed that the 6.8 percent of women who consumed one or more sugar-sweetened drinks daily had an 85 percent higher risk of liver cancer and a 68 percent higher risk of death from chronic liver disease compared to those who had fewer than three such drinks a month.
A soft drink can on a bed of sugar grains. (Joel Saget/AFP via Getty Images)
A First
The study authors noted that approximately 40 percent of liver cancer patients did not have common risk factors such as chronic hepatitis B or C infection, type 2 diabetes, excessive alcohol consumption, or obesity.
They highlighted the limited research on dietary factors and liver cancer and chronic liver disease mortality, emphasizing the importance of identifying dietary risk factors. They also mentioned that between 2017 and 2018, over 65 percent of U.S. adults consumed sugar-sweetened beverages daily.
Furthermore, the authors pointed out that previous studies had only established a “potential association” between sugar-sweetened beverage intake and the risk of liver cancer.
“To our knowledge, this is the first study to report an association between sugar sweetened beverage intake and chronic liver disease mortality,” said first author Longgang Zhao of the Brigham’s Channing Division of Network Medicine.
“Our findings, if confirmed, may pave the way to a public health strategy to reduce the risk of liver disease based on data from a large and geographically diverse population,” Zhao added.
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