Popular daily drinking habit could nearly triple risk of stomach cancer, major study finds

Drinking one sugary beverage each day could substantially increase the risk of developing stomach cancer, according to new research from Mass General Brigham.

Dig deeper:

After adjusting for other potential risk factors, researchers found that people who consumed at least one sugary drink per day had nearly three times the risk of gastric cancer compared with those who drank fewer than one serving per month.

About 63% of U.S. adults consume sugar-sweetened beverages at least once daily, according to CDC data.

Previous research has associated sugary drinks with higher rates of liver, breast and colorectal cancers, but their potential effects on stomach tissue had remained less clear.

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For the new study, researchers examined data from more than 100,000 participants enrolled in the Nurses' Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study.

What they're saying:

The long-running prospective cohort studies, overseen by Harvard-affiliated researchers, have investigated connections between lifestyle, diet and chronic disease among healthcare workers.

"It's definitely a concern because we are seeing an increase in cancers of the gastrointestinal tract, particularly in young people [under] 50," senior author Andrew T. Chan, a gastroenterologist and epidemiologist with the Mass General Brigham Cancer Institute in Boston, told Fox News Digital.

"Our increasing consumption of sugary drinks and also ultra-processed foods is likely to be contributing to some of these cancer trends," he added.

Why you should care:

Gastric cancer has a strong association with Helicobacter pylori bacteria, which can live in the lining of the stomach.

Among a subset of study participants, however, researchers found no association between sugary drink consumption and H. pylori, lending support to the theory that sugar — particularly fructose — could play a role.

Researchers classified sugar-sweetened drinks as regular sodas, fruit punches, lemonade and sports beverages, with fructose serving as the primary sweetener. Greater fructose intake was associated with a higher risk of stomach cancer.

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By comparison, artificially sweetened beverages — including diet sodas and other low-calorie carbonated drinks — were not associated with an increased risk of gastric cancer among the more than 100,000 participants.

Because the research was observational, the findings demonstrate an association rather than proving that sugary beverages directly cause stomach cancer.

The study population also consisted predominantly of White healthcare professionals, and the researchers noted that the findings will need to be confirmed in more diverse populations.

"The study is unable to really prove cause and effect," Chan said. "What we did see was an association. We certainly need to do more research to understand whether this association between sugary-sweetened beverages and stomach cancer is truly causal."

The findings were published in the journal Gastro Hep Advances.