Artificial sweeteners and human bladder cancer. Preliminary results.

3010 patients with cancer of the urinary bladder and 5783 controls drawn from the general population of ten geographic areas of the U.S.A. were interviewed. Subjects who reported over having used artificial sweeteners or artificially sweetened foods or beverages showed no elevation in risk. However, positive associations between various measures of use of artificial sweeteners and risk of bladder cancer were seen in several subgroups. Inconsistencies in the data suggest that the positive associations may be due to chance, but it is noteworthy that the subgroups were those chosen, a priori, to test hypotheses derived from laboratory experiments.