Consumption of aspartame and risk of breast cancer in the Nurses' Health Studies

Andrea Romanos-Nanclares; Eva Schernhammer; Walter C Willett; Michelle D Holmes; Wendy Y Chen; A Heather Eliassen

doi:10.1093/jnci/djae259

Consumption of aspartame and risk of breast cancer in the Nurses' Health Studies

J Natl Cancer Inst. 2024 Oct 17:djae259. doi: 10.1093/jnci/djae259. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Andrea Romanos-Nanclares¹, Eva Schernhammer^{1

2

3}, Walter C Willett^{3

4}, Michelle D Holmes^{1

3}, Wendy Y Chen^{1

5}, A Heather Eliassen^{1

3

4}

Affiliations

¹ Channing Division of Network Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
² Department of Epidemiology, Center for Public Health, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
³ Department of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA.
⁴ Department Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA.
⁵ Department of Medical Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, USA.

PMID: 39418201
DOI: 10.1093/jnci/djae259

Abstract

Debate persists regarding the potential carcinogenicity of aspartame as suggested by experimental studies. Therefore, we prospectively evaluated whether aspartame consumption is associated with breast cancer risk in the Nurses' Health Study (NHS) and Nurses' Health study II (NHSII). We used Cox models to calculate HRs and 95% CIs. During up to 30 years of follow-up with 4-yearly assessments of intake, we documented 10,814 invasive breast cancer cases. Overall, there was no association between aspartame consumption and invasive breast cancer risk (HR per 200 mg/day [approximately one 12 oz serving of diet soda] = 1.00 (95% CI 0.98, 1.03). We observed similar lack of associations after excluding cases occurring in the first 10 years of follow-up (n = 3,125) (HR per 200 mg/day 1.00, 95% CI 0.97, 1.03). In these cohorts, aspartame consumption did not increase breast cancer risk.