Greater consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages is linked to a higher risk of developing liver cancer in women after menopause, according to a new study presented at Nutrition 2022 Live Online, the annual conference of the American Society for Nutrition, and described in a press release from the organization.
Drinking sugar-sweetened beverages — which includes beverages sweetened with “regular” sugar (sucrose) or high-fructose corn syrup — is linked to a number of health risks, including a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes and a higher risk for colorectal cancer. These established health risks have led some public health experts to suggest that governments should take steps to discourage people from consuming these beverages, such as requiring warning labels with images of poor health outcomes. Scientists aren’t sure exactly why sugar-sweetened beverages appear to be linked to worse health outcomes than solid foods containing the same amount of sugar — but it may be because when consumed in liquid form, sugar doesn’t have the same effect at sating hunger, leading to more consumption of both sugar and total calories.
To get cutting-edge diabetes news, strategies for blood glucose management, nutrition tips, healthy recipes, and more delivered straight to your inbox, sign up for our free newsletters!
For the latest study, researchers looked at the relationship between sugar-sweetened beverage consumption and new cases of liver cancer in a group of 90,504 women who had gone through menopause. They were interested in liver cancer risk because this type of cancer has seen a sharp increase in recent decades in the United States. Some of this increase can be explained by established factors like chronic hepatitis, alcohol consumption, and diabetes, but about 40% of liver cancer cases aren’t linked to known risk factors, according to the researchers.
At the same time, the researchers said, consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages remains widespread in the United States — with about two-thirds of white adults reporting that they consumed some amount of these beverages on a given day when this question was asked in 2017 and 2018.
Sugar-sweetened drinks linked to liver cancer risk in postmenopausal women
The researchers found that compared with women who reported consuming fewer than three servings of sugar-sweetened beverages per month, those who consumed at least one serving of sugar-sweetened beverages per day were 78% more likely to develop liver cancer during a median follow-up period of about 18 years. And women who reported consuming at least one soft drink per day — regardless of the sweetener in it — were 73% more likely to develop liver cancer than those who reported consuming fewer than three servings per month.
The good news is that only 7% of the women in the study reported consuming at least one 12-ounce serving of sugar-sweetened beverages per day — meaning that the overall group of study participants might be more health-conscious than the general population, or at least less likely to consume these beverages.
The researchers noted that several different mechanisms could be involved in the link between sugar-sweetened beverages and liver cancer, including that these beverages might contribute to insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes, obesity, or increased liver fat — all of which have been linked to a higher risk for liver cancer in previous research. But they added that this study was only observational, meaning that it couldn’t demonstrate that consuming more of these beverages actually accounted for the higher liver cancer risk seen in participants who reported this habit.
“If our findings are confirmed, reducing sugar-sweetened beverage consumption might serve as a public health strategy to reduce liver cancer burden,” said study author Longgang Zhao, a doctoral candidate at the University of South Carolina, in the press release. “Replacing sugar-sweetened beverages with water and non-sugar-sweetened coffee or tea could significantly lower liver cancer risk.”
Want to learn more about protecting your liver? Read “Diabetes and NAFLD,” “Preventing Fatty Liver (NAFLD),” and “Hepatitis C and Diabetes: Is There a Link?”