So my chance of developing gastric cancer doubles to 1.8% chance over my lifetime if I drink sugar-beverages every day.. (This math wasn't sponsored by a cancer testing company.)

After you actually get the the study, there wasn't any mention of other associated lifestyle behaviors that may contribute to the risk of gastric cancers. What sticks out to me is that people drinking one or more sugar-packed beverages per day likely have additional diet or lifestyle concerns.

It's not that I think the number crunching for the study was wrong or that the sample sizes were too small, it's just that it was extremely focused on making a correlation for the sake of making a correlation.

[–] dregan@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

After accounting for other potential risk factors,

I doubt Mass General Brigham is so incompetent that they don't know how to do science. They do talk about the study limitations, especially around H. Pylori status, but also state that they collected detailed health and lifestyle history to control for confounding factors.

[–] remotelove@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 week ago

I certainly wouldn't say it was incompetent and there is a good set of data points. Given the nature of what the study is attempting to correlate, not explaining what limitations were taken into account is a a significant limitation, IMHO. It is called out that there are limitations, but that it is essentially just a short footnote. (The full paper does a better job of calling out other studies and some contradictions.)

This referenced study found the opposite and had a no (or weaker correlation) to cancer associated with SSBs: Khairan P, et al. Sugary drink consumption and the subsequent risk of gastric cancer: Khairan P, et al. Sugary drink consumption and the subsequent risk of gastric cancer: The Japan Public Health Center-based Prospective Study. Eur J Clin Nutr 2023;77:218-25.

Without doing a comparative analysis of the studies, which would be interesting, I have open questions about what the key differences were. My first guess (without calling either study "wrong") is that maybe risk factors were calculated differently?

On the darker side, there is motivation for keying-in on a specific correlation and that cannot be ignored either. (Past grants, groups requesting the study, etc.) The original paper also sets itself up to be a marketing call-out for artificially sweetened beverages, unfortunately. (I am not saying that is the intent, but the wording aligns exactly with what vitamin water-type company would want to see. It made for a good Lemmy post title, at a minimum.)

At the end of the day, they stated what they were looking for and presented what seems to be a clean analysis of that data. The limitations that were presented have the potential to be significant, however.

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

so what in the sugar causes it, contamination. nitrates in mean is a carcinogen. so known causes for stomach cancer was gerd/ acid reflux and H pylori infection,alcohol and stomach cancer is somewhat uncommon.

[–] Erystela_Thevale@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

Data might not lie, but the people who make the data can. I think what matters is how much you can eliminate the intermediate leap from that correlation.