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Soft drinks, sweetened beverages and risk of pancreatic cancer

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Abstract

Soft drinks usually contain sugar and caffeine that might influence pancreatic carcinogenesis. We considered the association between carbonated drink consumption and pancreatic cancer risk in an Italian case–control study conducted in 1991–2008 on 326 pancreatic cancer cases and 652 matched controls. We also combined the results from all the studies on soft drinks or sweetened beverages and pancreatic cancer published before June 2010, using a meta-analytic approach. In the case–control study, compared with non-drinkers, the multivariate odds ratio was 1.02 (95% confidence interval, CI, 0.72–1.44) for carbonated drink consumers and 0.89 (95% CI 0.53–1.50) for regular consumers (at least one drink/day). Besides our study, from the literature search, we identified 4 other case–control (1,919 cases) and 6 cohort studies (2,367 cases). The pooled relative risks (RR) for soft drink consumers vs. non-consumers were 0.97 (95% CI 0.81–1.16) for case–control, 1.05 (95% CI 0.94–1.17) for cohort, and 1.02 (95% CI 0.93–1.12) for all studies. The pooled RRs for heavy drinkers were 1.08 (95% CI 0.73–1.60) for case–control, 1.21 (95% CI 0.90–1.63) for cohort, and 1.16 (95% CI 0.93–1.45) for all studies. In conclusion, soft drink consumption is not materially related to pancreatic cancer risk.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Italian Association for Cancer Research (AIRC), Milan, Italy.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare they do not have any conflicts of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Epidemiologia, Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche “Mario Negri”, 20156, Milan, Italy

    Silvano Gallus, Federica Turati, Alessandra Tavani & Carlo La Vecchia

  2. Dipartimento di Medicina del Lavoro “Clinica del Lavoro Luigi Devoto”, Sezione di Statistica Medica e Biometria “Giulio A. Maccacaro”, Università degli Studi di Milano, 20133, Milan, Italy

    Federica Turati & Carlo La Vecchia

  3. Unità di Epidemiologia e Biostatistica, IRCCS Centro di Riferimento Oncologico, 33081, Aviano, PN, Italy

    Jerry Polesel & Renato Talamini

  4. Infections and Cancer Epidemiology Group, International Agency for Cancer Research, 69372, Lyon CEDEX 08, France

    Silvia Franceschi

  5. Unit of Epidemiology for Clinical Research, Department of Epidemiology, Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri, Via La Masa, 19, 20156, Milan, Italy

    Silvano Gallus

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  1. Silvano Gallus
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  2. Federica Turati
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  3. Alessandra Tavani
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  4. Jerry Polesel
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  5. Renato Talamini
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  6. Silvia Franceschi
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  7. Carlo La Vecchia
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Correspondence to Silvano Gallus.

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Gallus, S., Turati, F., Tavani, A. et al. Soft drinks, sweetened beverages and risk of pancreatic cancer. Cancer Causes Control 22, 33–39 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10552-010-9665-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10552-010-9665-8

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