Sweetened Beverages Consumption and Pancreatic Cancer: A Meta-Analysis

Abstract

No study has summarized earlier findings on the association of sweetened beverages (SBs) consumption and risk of Pancreatic Cancer (PC). This systematic review and meta-analysis was conducted to systematically review available observational studies that examined the association of SB consumption with risk of PC. Relevant papers published up to December 2017 were searched through PubMed, MEDLINE, SCOPUS, EMBASE, and Google Scholar databases, using relevant keywords. Cohort and case-control studies that examined the association of SB with PC in adults were included. Overall, 5 cohort studies with 2,041,689 participants (58.68 female, 41.32 male) and 4 case-control studies enrolled 1,496 cases with PC (55.82% male, 44.18% female) and 3,179 controls (53.32% male, 46.68% female) were included. Combining effect sizes from cohort studies, we found no significant association between SB consumption and risk of PC (RR: 1.06; 95% CI: 0.87-1.29). Although, stratification by the study location, follow-up duration, exposure and outcome assessment method, and adjustment for physical activity and race/ethnicity removed between-study heterogeneity, it did not affect the association. We found that 50 g/d increment in SB consumption was not linearly associated with risk of PC (RR: 1.00, 95% CI: 0.96, 1.04). No significant nonlinear association was also reached (P-nonlinearity = 0.13). In addition, pooling effect sizes from case-control studies, we did not find significant association between SB consumption and risk of PC (RR: 1.11; 95% CI: 0.92-1.35). We did not find any significant association between SB consumption and risk of PC. Additional studies are required to shed light on this issue.