Men who drink one normal-sized soft drink per day are at greater risk of getting more aggressive forms of prostate cancer, according to a Swedish study.
"Among the men who drank a lot of soft drinks or other drinks with added sugar, we saw an increased risk of prostate cancer of around 40 per cent," said Isabel Drake, a PhD student at Lund University, Sweden.
The study, released on Monday and set to be published in the upcoming edition of The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, followed over 8,000 men aged 45 to 73 for an average of 15 years.
Those who drank one 330-millilitre soft drink a day were 40 per cent more likely to develop more serious forms of prostate cancer that required treatment.
The cancer was discovered after the men showed symptoms of the disease, and not through the screening process known as prostate-specific antigen (PSA).
Those who ate a diet heavy in rice and pasta increased their risk of getting milder forms of prostate cancer, which often required no treatment, by 31 per cent, while a high intake of sugary breakfast cereals raised the incidence of milder forms of the cancer to 38 per cent, Drake said.