Sugary drinks hurt survival in breast cancer

Frequent consumption of sugar-sweetened soda contributes to an increased risk of death from any cause or due to breast cancer in women, a study suggests.

The study used data from the Western New York Exposures and Breast Cancer Study and included 927 women with incident, invasive breast cancer. All of them completed dietary recall using a food frequency questionnaire to ascertain frequency of sugar-sweetened soda consumption.

More than half of the breast cancer patients died (n=386, 54.7 percent) over a median follow-up of 18.7 years, as ascertained via the National Death Index. Women who frequently drank sugary beverages were more likely to have reduced survival compared with abstainers.

Multivariable Cox proportional hazards models showed that compared with never/rarely sugar-sweetened soda intake, consumption frequency of ≥5 times per week conferred an increased risk of both total mortality (hazard ratio [HR], 1.62, 95 percent confidence interval [CI], 1.16–2.26; p_trend<0.01) and breast cancer-specific mortality (HR, 1.85, 95 percent CI, 1.16–2.94; p_trend<0.01).

In subgroup analyses, the risk of total mortality associated with frequent sugar-sweetened soda intake was evident among ER-positive but not ER-negative patients, among women with body mass index above but not below the median, and among premenopausal but not postmenopausal women.

The present data support existing guidelines to lower the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages, including for women with a diagnosis of breast cancer.