Adults who drank sugar-sweetened beverages every day had a higher observed risk of gastric cancer, while artificially sweetened drinks showed no such association.
Sugary drinks are part of the daily routine for many Americans, with approximately 65% of U.S. adults reporting that they consume at least one sugar-sweetened beverage each day. Researchers at the Mass General Brigham Cancer Institute found that daily consumption was associated with a higher risk of gastric cancer, while artificially sweetened drinks showed no such association. The findings were published in Gastro Hep Advances.
Sugar-sweetened beverages have previously been associated with increased risks of colorectal, breast, and liver cancers, but their relationship with gastric cancer has been less clear. To investigate, researchers examined data from 112,284 participants in the Nurses’ Health Study and Health Professionals Follow-Up Study, two long-running studies that collected detailed information about diet, lifestyle, and health over several decades. During that period, 278 participants developed gastric cancer.
“This is the first study to demonstrate an association between sugar-sweetened beverage intake and gastric cancer in a U.S. population,” said senior author Andrew T. Chan, MD, MPH, a gastroenterologist and epidemiologist with the Mass General Brigham Cancer Institute. “Gastric cancer is the fifth leading cause of cancer death worldwide, but we’ve known very little about how diet might contribute to this cancer.”
Daily sugary drinks were linked to higher risk
After adjusting for other possible risk factors, researchers found that people who drank at least one serving of a sugar-sweetened beverage each day had a 2.45 times higher risk of gastric cancer than those who consumed less than one serving per month. The association appeared in both men and women.
Greater overall fructose intake (fructose is the main sweetener in these drinks) was also associated with a higher incidence of gastric cancer. Among women in the Nurses’ Health Study, for example, drinking more than one sugar-sweetened beverage per day was associated with a 3.04-fold higher risk compared with women who rarely consumed them. By contrast, greater consumption of artificially sweetened beverages was not associated with higher gastric cancer incidence after researchers accounted for other factors.
For the analysis, sugar-sweetened beverages included carbonated drinks, punch, lemonade, and sports drinks. Artificially sweetened beverages were defined as low-calorie carbonated drinks.
Because infection with Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) is a known risk factor for gastric cancer, the researchers also examined H. pylori status among a subset of 940 participants. Slightly more than one third showed evidence of infection, but sugar-sweetened beverage consumption was not associated with H. pylori infection.
The study cannot establish cause
Because the research was observational, it cannot determine whether sugar-sweetened beverages themselves caused the higher rates of gastric cancer. Other differences among people who consumed more of these drinks could have contributed to the association.
Researchers also had limited information about H. pylori infection and family history of gastric cancer, and the participants were predominantly white, restricting the ability to study differences among racial and ethnic groups. However, the large number of participants and decades of detailed health and lifestyle data allowed the researchers to account for many other potential gastric cancer risk factors.
Further research will be needed to confirm the association and determine why sugar-sweetened beverages might be linked to gastric cancer risk.
Reference: “Association between sugar-sweetened and artificially sweetened beverage intake and gastric cancer incidence” by Tae-Geun Gweon, Jane Ha, Hansuel Kim, Mengxi Du, Mingyang Song and Andrew T. Chan, 17 August 2026, Gastro Hep Advances.
DOI: 10.1016/j.gastha.2026.101097
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