Potential biological mechanisms to explain the findings include known links between sweetened beverages and glucose levels, concentrations of insulin, and C-reactive protein, in addition to the previously mentioned associations with cardiometabolic risk factors including weight gain, hypertension, and diabetes, Larsson and colleagues said. The researchers also lacked data to distinguish between sugar and artificial sweeteners.
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All were asked to record their average consumption of nearly 100 food and drink items over the previous year, including their consumption of standard servings of sweetened drinks per day and per week. The prevalence of the condition is rising due at least in part to consumption of sodas and other sweetened beverages, Larsson and colleagues note in the journal Heart.
During a mean follow-up of 11.7 years, the investigators identified 4,113 incident cases of heart failure (3,604 first hospitalizations and 509 deaths).
Heart failure affects 900,000 Britons.
New research has suggested there could be a link between heart failure and drinking just two sweetened soft drinks a day.
They also stressed the research only involved older white men and may not be applicable to younger people, women, or certain ethnic groups.
But they said the findings could help doctors in giving out dietary advice to prevent heart failure.
“People who regularly consume sweetened beverages should consider reducing their consumption to lower their risk of heart failure as well as obesity and type 2 diabetes and possibly other diseases”, Larsson said.
Miguel Ruiz-Canela and Spanish professors Miguel Martinez-Gonzalez said individuals who drink lots of sweetened beverages often have a lousy diet general.
“It’s a very miserable life”, Dr. Roberto Bolli, chief of cardiovascular medicine at the University of Louisville School of Medicine, told CNN. “Patients with heart failure are severely limited in their ability to perform daily tasks, they get short of breath for even small efforts like walking one block, or sometimes even walking inside their house”. “Based on their results, the best message for a preventive strategy would be to recommend an occasional consumption of sweetened beverages or to avoid them altogether”.
The condition is caused by the heart failing to pump enough blood around the body at the right pressure.
The risk for heart failure is mostly associated with coronary artery disease, uncontrolled high blood pressure, or a prior heart attack that damaged heart tissue. By setting up the amount of sweetened beverages drunk into quintiles, Cox proportional hazards ratios were calculated with an without adjusting for age, educational attainment, smoking, alcohol consumption, physical activity, family history of myocardial infarction, history of stroke, angina, hypertension, diabetes, BMI, coffee consumption, fruit intake, vegetable intake, processed meat consumption, fish consumption, and total energy intake.
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“Trying to decide if sweetened drinks are the single cause of heart failure is impossible when diet and heart failure are both such complicated issues”.
