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Causal relationship of sugar-sweetened and sweet beverages with colorectal cancer: a Mendelian randomization study

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Abstract

Background and aim

Prospective cohort studies have suggested that sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) intake is significantly associated with the risk of colorectal cancer (CRC). However, it remains unclear whether this observed association was susceptible to potential confounding factors due to the long-term development process of CRC, and the risk of CRC associated with sweet beverages has rarely been reported. We aimed to investigate the association between SSBs/sweet beverages and CRC risk.

Methods

We performed two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis using independent genetic variants for SSBs and sweet beverages from a published genome-wide association study (GWAS). Summary statistics for instrument-outcome associations from two databases for malignant neoplasms of the colon and the rectum (FinnGen and UK Biobank). The inverse weighted method (IVW) meta-analysis was the main method used to estimate the relationship, and sensitivity analyses were performed with Cochran’s Q test, leave-one-out analysis, MR–Egger regression, Steiger filtering, and the MR PRESSO test.

Results

Genetically predicted SSBs intake was associated with a higher colonic malignant neoplasms risk (odds ratio (OR): 1.013; 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.001, 1.026; P = 0.036) in a combined sample size of 579,986 individuals (4029 cases). Such a significant causal effect of SSBs on rectal malignant neoplasms or sweet beverages on CRC was not observed.

Conclusion

Our findings corroborated a causal association between SSBs and colonic malignant neoplasms risk but did not support such a relationship in the analysis of the rectal malignant neoplasms nor the sweet beverage intake, which might be interpreted with caution and further confirmed.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank the professional editors of AJE Company (www.aje.cn) for editing the English of this manuscript.

Funding

No funding was received for conducting this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Gastroenterology, Ningbo Hospital, Zhejiang University, Ningbo, China

    Cenqin Liu & Lei Xu

  2. Department of Gastroenterology, The First Affiliated Hospital, College of Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China

    Cenqin Liu & Chaohui Yu

  3. Department of Gastroenterology, Ningbo First Hospital, Ningbo, 315010, China

    Cenqin Liu, Shuhao Zheng, Hui Gao, Xin Yuan, Zhixin Zhang, Jiarong Xie & Lei Xu

  4. School of Medicine, Ningbo University, Ningbo, China

    Shuhao Zheng, Hui Gao, Xin Yuan & Zhixin Zhang

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  1. Cenqin Liu
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Correspondence to Lei Xu.

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Supplementary Information

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394_2022_2993_MOESM1_ESM.tif

Supplementary file1 Leave-one-out plot of MR analyses from SSB/sweet beverage intake to colorectal malignant neoplasm in each database (TIF 758 KB)

Supplementary file2 (XLSX 16 KB)

Supplementary file3 (DOCX 24 KB)

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Liu, C., Zheng, S., Gao, H. et al. Causal relationship of sugar-sweetened and sweet beverages with colorectal cancer: a Mendelian randomization study. Eur J Nutr 62, 379–383 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00394-022-02993-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00394-022-02993-x

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