Drinking diet soda may increase the risk for proliferative diabetic retinopathy — a severe type of diabetic eye disease that can lead to blindness — according to a study published online in the September/October issue of Clinical and Experimental Ophthalmology. The study is the first to evaluate the link between soft drink consumption and microvascular complications of diabetes. "In our clinical sample of people with diabetes, consuming more than four cans, or 1.5 liters, of diet soft drinks per week, was associated with a twofold increased risk of having proliferative diabetic retinopathy," said the first author of the study, Ph.D.
She is a clinical research fellow at the Singapore Eye Research Institute and an assistant professor at the Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore. Interestingly, the study did not find a correlation between the consumption of regular, sugar-sweetened soft…
