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Population study: followed a group

Study that followed 36,608 Australians: diet drinks linked to higher type 2 diabetes risk

Kabthymer and colleagues · Diabetes & metabolism · 2025

Original title: The association of sweetened beverage intake with risk of type 2 diabetes in an Australian population: A longitudinal study.

Under review. A person has not yet checked this summary against the paper. It is written from the PubMed abstract. Until a person checks it, search engines are asked not to list this page.

What the study found

Points to harm

High diet drink intake was linked to higher type 2 diabetes risk (IRR = 1.38; 95 % CI: 1.18-1.61). Sugary drinks IRR = 1.23. Adjusting for BMI removed the link for sugary drinks but not diet drinks.

The study at a glance

Type of study
Population study: followed a group
Who or what was studied
36,608 people · 36,608 Australians aged 40 to 69
What was tested
Drinking diet or sugary drinks at least once a day, compared with never or less than once a month
What it measured
The question itself: body weight and metabolic health
Who has a stake
No stake declared
No competing interests declared.
Journal
Diabetes & metabolism, 2025
Source
PubMed record 40383372. This page is based on the abstract only.

How much this study counts

  • –Shows a link, not a cause: people chose their own habits, and other differences between them may explain the result.
  • ✓Followed people over time, so habits were recorded before the outcome happened.
  • ✓Large: 36,608 people.
  • ✓Measured the question itself: body weight and metabolic health.
  • ✓No competing interests declared.
  • •Summarized from the PubMed abstract only. The full paper may hold details the abstract leaves out.

✓ Strength– Limit• Note

These points come from fixed rules about the type of study, its size and length, what it measured, and who has a stake. Every study on Digestery gets the same rules.

Where this study sits

Each dot is one on-topic paper on this question. Steps near the top answer the question more directly.

↑ Stronger evidence

  1. Trials in people: body weight

    4

    1 benefit, 1 mixed, 2 no difference

  2. Trials in people: other measures

    0

    None among the papers we read.

  3. Trials in people: lab tests or safety

    7

    1 benefit, 1 mixed, 4 no difference, 1 harm

  4. Population studies

    5

    1 benefit, 4 harm

    ↑ This study is the ringed dot

  5. Blood levels and genes

    1

    1 harm

↓ Weaker evidence

  • Points to benefit
  • Mixed
  • No difference
  • No direction
  • Points to harm

How it fits with the other research

The short answer to “Do artificial sweeteners cause weight gain?”

Trials say no; population studies disagree.

Confidence: low. Based on 32 on-topic papers.

Read the full answer

Of the other 4 papers on the same step: 1 benefit, 3 harm. This one found harm. It agrees with most of them.

Other papers on the same step

See all 32 studies on this question

How this page was made

Label

First read of the abstract
Claude Sonnet
Independent second read
Claude Haiku
Differences settled
The two reads agreed on every checked field. Claude Opus 5.5.
Headline
Claude Sonnet, from the checked study record. A script checked its numbers and wording.
Numbers
Checked against the abstract by a script
“How much this study counts”
Fixed rules, the same for every study
Source check by a person
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