Soft drinks, sweetened beverages and risk of pancreatic cancer

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.