English: Diet Coke Products (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Some interesting but preliminary findings summarized in Medscape News Today via a post in the LinkedIn Clinical Nurse Educator group:

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/779290?src=rss

Selected quotes:

“A new study from France suggests that women who drink large amounts of diet soda are at increased risk for type 2 diabetes. The findings also support the previously documented association between high intake of regular sugar-sweetened beverages and the condition, report Guy Fagherazzi, from the Center for Research in Epidemiology and Population Health, Villejuif, France, and colleagues in a study published onlineJanuary 30 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Prior research into the relationship between diet soda (artificially sweetened beverages) and type 2 diabetes has produced conflicting results, and while the current study does not necessarily imply causation, there are some biologically plausible mechanisms, the researchers suggest.”

“The data come from a large prospective cohort study of 66,118 women in France investigating links between diet and cancer. There were 1369 new cases of type 2 diabetes diagnosed during the follow-up period from 1993 to 2007.

Based on self-reported dietary consumption, the average intake of regular sodas was 328 mL/week, while for diet sodas it was higher, at 568 mL/week.

The risk for type 2 diabetes was elevated among the women in the highest quartiles for both sugar-sweetened beverages (>359 mL/week) and artificially sweetened beverages (>603 mL/week) compared with women who did not consume those beverages, with hazard ratios of 1.34 and 2.21, respectively, after multivariate adjustment for a variety of covariates (other than body mass index [BMI]).

Strong positive trends in type 2 diabetes risk were observed across quartiles of consumption for both types of beverage (P = .0088 and P < .0001, respectively). Adjustment for BMI did modify the results somewhat, although the associations remained significant for both sugar-sweetened beverages and artificially sweetened beverages.

The authors also conducted sensitivity analyses to test the hypothesis that people who are at risk for type 2 diabetes by virtue of obesity may preferentially drink artificially sweetened beverages, but the results suggest that such a “reverse causation” mechanism is “unlikely,” they note.

“Our results — in accordance with a recent joint scientific statement of the AHA and ADA — strongly suggest the need to conduct randomized trials that evaluate metabolic consequences of [artificially sweetened beverage] components, such as artificial sweeteners, to prove a causal link between [artificially sweetened beverage] consumption and type 2 diabetes,” the study authors conclude.”