# Association of sweetened beverage intake with incident risk of breast cancer: a prospective cohort study

## TL;DR

A study of 86,247 people found that drinking pure fruit/vegetable juice was linked to a higher risk of breast cancer, while replacing it with artificially sweetened drinks lowered the risk.

## Contribution

This study identifies a potential link between pure fruit/vegetable juice consumption and increased breast cancer risk, and suggests substitution with ASB may reduce risk.

## Key findings

- Consuming pure fruit/vegetable juice was associated with a 13% higher risk of breast cancer.
- Replacing pure juice with ASB was linked to a 10% lower breast cancer risk.
- No significant associations were found between SSB or ASB and breast cancer risk.

## Abstract

This large prospective cohort study aimed to clarify uncertain associations between sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB), artificially sweetened beverages (ASB), pure fruit/vegetable juice and breast cancer risk.

In 86,247 cancer-free UK Biobank participants at baseline, Cox proportional hazard models were performed to investigate the associations of SSB, ASB, pure fruit/vegetable juice with incident breast cancer risk.

In total, 2,644 cases of incident breast cancer occurred during the median follow-up of 10 years. In Cox proportional hazards model, participants consuming >0 and ≤1 serving/day of pure fruit/vegetable juice had a hazard ratio (HR) of 1.13 (95% CI: 1.05–1.23; P = 0.002) compared to non-consumers (P = 0.004 for trend). However, no associations were observed for SSB and ASB with breast cancer risk. We also found that replacing 1 serving per day of pure fruit/vegetable juice with ASB was associated with 10% lower risk of incident breast cancer in substitution analyses.

Our findings indicated that pure fruit/vegetable juice was associated with increased risk of breast cancer, highlighting the potential role of sweetened beverages in breast cancer prevention strategies and call for further research to understand the underlying mechanisms.