<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<recommendedContent xmlns="http://api.mspoke.com">
    <recommendedItem id="20100101_19_440"
                     title="Soft Drinks Linked to Pancreatic Cancer Risk (CME/CE)"
                     score="0.015"
                     href="http://www.medpagetoday.com/HematologyOncology/OtherCancers/tb/18354?impressionId=1265762286343"
                     
      &lt;p&gt;Regular consumers of sugary soft drinks are at higher risk for pancreatic cancer than fruit juice drinkers or the general population, a new Singaporean study has found.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Chinese men and women living in Singapore who drank two or more soft drinks per week were 87% more likely to contract pancreatic cancer after the researchers adjusted for factors such as smoking (95% CI 1.10 to 3.15), according to the report published Feb. 8 in &lt;em&gt;Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers &amp;amp; Prevention.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&quot;In this large prospective cohort of Chinese men and women in Singapore, those who reported regular soft drink consumption were at increased risk of pancreatic cancer when compared with those who largely abstained,&quot; Mark Pereira, PhD, of the School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota, and colleagues wrote. &quot;There was no association between consumption of juice and risk of pancreatic cancer.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;While pancreatic cancer is relatively rare, it is one of the most deadly cancers, with less than 5% of patients surviving five years after diagnosis. Although rates have generally plateaued in the U.S., they continue to climb in some Asian countries, including Singapore.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&quot;This increase may reflect demographic and socioeconomic shifts as well as a transition towards a more westernized lifestyle and diet,&quot; the authors wrote.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Research has shown that insulin promotes pancreatic cancer cell growth, and some researchers think sugary foods could result in blood sugar and insulin fluctuations that expose the pancreas to high concentrations of insulin.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;While fruit juices contain sugar, soft drinks are the major sources of added sugar in the U.S. diet and major contributors to hyperglycemia and hyperinsulinemia.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Pereira and colleagues followed 60,524 men and women who enrolled in the Singapore Chinese Health Study between April 1993 and December 1998 and were followed for 14 years.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;At enrollment, the participants completed a 146-question food frequency questionnaire, which contained three items related to soft drinks and juice. The questions asked the participants how much, if any, they drank of soft drinks such as Coca-Cola and 7-Up, orange juice, and other fruit and vegetable juices.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The dietary data was later cross-referenced with records from the Singapore Cancer Registry and the Singapore Registry of Births and Deaths, to determine which of the participants had died of pancreatic cancer and whether it might be related to their soft drink or juice consumption.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Overall, researchers found that 140 participants had contracted pancreatic cancer.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The results were largely consistent with three of four previous U.S. studies on the links between pancreatic cancer and soft drinks. Three of the U.S. studies found an association between soft drinks and cancer.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The author acknowledged that soft drink consumers are more likely than abstainers to participate in other unhealthy behaviors, including smoking and overeating, which makes it difficult to determine that soft drink consumption is an independent risk factor for pancreatic cancer.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;For instance, smokers in their study were at higher risk for pancreatic cancer. &quot;We could not rule out the possibility of residual confounding by factors associated with the habit of drinking soft drinks or other unascertained factors such as waist circumference,&quot; they wrote.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;They also noted that the study was limited in statistical power because pancreatic cancer is rare, which limited the sample size of cancer cases. &quot;Also, because we were unable to collect repeated dietary measurements in this study, we were unable to account for changes in consumption of soft drinks and juices,&quot; they wrote, &quot;especially when the diagnosis of diabetes occurred after the baseline interview.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt; &lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;float:left;border-style:solid;border-width:1px;border-color:#8dabbc;font-family:arial;font-size:12px;background-color:#DBE9F2;padding:5px;&quot;&gt;&lt;p&gt;The study was funded by the National Cancer Institute.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The authors reported no financial conflicts of interest.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;clear:both;&quot;&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
    </recommendedItem>
    <recommendedItem id="20100101_19_119"
                     title="AACR-IASLC: Green Tea May Have Cancer Benefit (CME/CE)"
                     score="-0.005"
                     href="http://www.medpagetoday.com/MeetingCoverage/AACR-IASLC/tb/17931?impressionId=1265762286343"
                     
      CORONADO, Calif.  --  Green tea may reduce the risk of developing lung cancer, particularly for smokers, according to a case-control study.&lt;br&gt;
&lt;br&gt;At least a cup a day was associated with a 5.16-fold lower lung cancer risk among Taiwanese adults (&lt;em&gt;P&lt;/em&gt;&amp;lt;0.001), found I-Hsin Lin, MS, of the Chung Shan Medical University in Zhonghe City, Taiwan, and colleagues.&lt;br&gt;
&lt;br&gt;And for current and former smokers, regular green tea intake was associated with a 12.71-fold lower risk than abstaining (&lt;em&gt;P&lt;/em&gt;&amp;lt;0.001), suggesting that the antioxidants in tea have &quot;an inhibitory effect ... elicited by smoking.&quot;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;br&gt;The findings were reported here at the Joint Conference on Molecular Origins of Lung Cancer sponsored by the American Association for Cancer Research-International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer.&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&quot;We suggest smokers or nonsmokers, both of them, should drink green tea to keep away from lung cancer,&quot; Lin told &lt;em&gt;MedPage Today&lt;/em&gt;. &quot;However, the cessation of smoking is the best way for cancer prevention.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Chemoprevention with green tea is appealing but it&apos;s too soon for a clinical recommendation, commented Roy S. Herbst, MD, PhD, of the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and a chair of the conference.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&quot;It should probably be the basis of a hypothesis for a larger chemoprevention trial across multiple populations,&quot; he said in an interview.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Given inconclusive results in prior epidemiologic studies, Lin&apos;s group designed a hospital-based case-control study that included questionnaires and genotyping of 170 primary lung cancer patients and 340 age- and gender-matched healthy controls who presented for physical checkups.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Most participants in both groups reported drinking no green tea. But seven of the 170 cases and 64 of the 340 controls said they typically drank at least one 120-mL (4 oz) cup a day.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Overall, lung cancer risk appeared linked to green tea consumption.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Compared with those who drank one or more cups per day, those who drank it infrequently (less than once a day) were 4.22 times more likely to develop lung cancer (&lt;em&gt;P&lt;/em&gt;&amp;lt;0.01).&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Those who didn&apos;t drink green tea at all were at a 5.16-fold greater risk (&lt;em&gt;P&lt;/em&gt;&amp;lt;0.001), nearly the same elevation in risk seen with smoking for 40 pack-years compared with never smoking (odds ratio 5.46, &lt;em&gt;P&lt;/em&gt;&amp;lt;0.001).&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Among never smokers, greater green tea intake was more protective (&lt;em&gt;P&lt;/em&gt;&amp;lt;0.01 for trend). But risk was not significantly lower for those who drank at least one cup daily than for those who drank none.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Among smokers  --  whether current or ever  --  the same dose effect was seen (&lt;em&gt;P&lt;/em&gt;&amp;lt;0.001). Compared with individuals who averaged one or more cups daily, non-tea drinkers had 12.71 times higher risk (&lt;em&gt;P&lt;/em&gt;&amp;lt;0.001) and those who had less than one cup a day were at 12.22 times greater risk (&lt;em&gt;P&lt;/em&gt;&amp;lt;0.01).&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;A long-term green tea habit appeared more protective as well, with a more than threefold reduction in risk for more than 10 years compared with none among both smokers and never smokers.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;That green tea had a greater impact for smokers than for nonsmokers was a surprise, Lin said. She cautioned, though, that the study may have been confounded by various unmeasured factors.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Since the control group was recruited at presentation for routine physicals, they may have followed a generally healthier lifestyle than those with lung cancer, Lin suggested.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Experimental studies have suggested that one mechanism for chemoprevention with green tea may be its impact on insulin-like growth factors.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The researchers looked at genetic polymorphisms tied to expression of insulin-like growth factors, and found that the benefits of green tea were almost entirely restricted to individuals without lung cancer-susceptible genotypes, supporting an interaction between this genetic- and lifestyle-related risk.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;float:left;border-style:solid;border-width:1px;border-color:#8dabbc;font-family:arial;font-size:12px;background-color:#DBE9F2;padding:5px;&quot;&gt;&lt;p&gt;The researchers reported no conflicts of interest.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Herbst reported no relevant conflicts of interest.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;clear:both;&quot;&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
    </recommendedItem>
    <recommendedItem id="20090101_1_354"
                     title="Tea Tippling Linked to Lower Ovarian Cancer Risk"
                     score="-0.005"
                     href="