Colon Cancer: No Link to Coffee, Soft Drinks
Reported May 12, 2010
(Ivanhoe Newswire) — Despite the questionable effects on your overall health of drinking large amounts of coffee and sugar-sweetened, carbonated soft drinks, you can take colon cancer off your list of worries. A new study has shown there is no specific link between coffee and soft drinks and colon cancer.
Sugar-sweetened soft drinks are associated with weight gain, obesity, and other conditions, however, they don’t appear to be risk factors for colon cancer.
Xuehong Zhang, M.D., Sc.D., and colleagues at the Harvard School of Public Health analyzed data from 13 studies conducted in North America and Europe. Among 731,441 participants, 5,604 developed colon cancer. Those who drank large amounts of coffee –more than six 8-ounce cups a day — were no more likely to develop the disease than those who drank less.
Likewise, those who drank more than 18 ounces daily of sugar-sweetened, carbonated beverages had no higher risk of colon cancer. The authors note that the results for sugar-sweetened carbonated beverages should be interpreted with caution, because only 2 percent of the study population drank more than 18 ounces of these beverages daily.
The authors found a modest association between drinking high amounts of non-herbal tea — more than four 8-ounce cups a day — and colon cancer risk. However, they note that very few people in the study drank that much tea and that the association could be due to chance.
“Drinking coffee or sugar-sweetened carbonated soft drinks was not associated with colon cancer risk,” the researchers were quoted as saying. “However, a modest positive association with higher tea consumption is possible and requires further study.”
SOURCE: Journal of the National Cancer Institute, published online May 7, 2010