Consumption of Carbonated Beverages and the Risk For Gastrointestinal Disease: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Issues of different effects of carbonated soft drinks to human health have been circulated and analyzed in both scientific and non-scientific approaches. However, there is few publications discussing the specific effect of carbonation on human health and, more often than not, studies have largely concentrated on the effect of sugar or calorie content in carbonated beverages in affecting our health. Thus the effect of carbonation itself on human health is then lost in arguments contradicting or reaffirming the effect of carbonated soft drinks. We conducted this systematic review to specifically observe current findings on the effect of carbonation in beverages on human health. This systematic review was conducted using Scirus search engine to list articles relevant with keywords such as C02, carbonated beverage, carbonation, sparkling water, gastrointestinal, gastro-esophageal and adenocarcinoma. Next, articles were obtained from numerous databases and screened for their relevance and context. Finally, peer reading and discussion were conducted for the writing of this article. The results of this systematic review observed three major article subjects currently correlated with exclusive effect of carbonation on gastrointestinal health. Published studies indicate that oral cavity/dental health, gastro-esophageal reflux and most recently esophageal adenocarcinoma are discussed frequently and observed in population studies in different countries consuming significant quantities of carbonated beverages.Eight articles (40%) discussed dominant factors not correlated with carbonation which significantly affect dental erosions. Six (33%) articles observed no clear clinical significance carbonation promotes or exacerbate gastro-esophageal reflux. Interestingly, five (27%) articles reported insignificant correlation, even inversed, of carbonation on esophageal carcinoma. Currently available scientific studies on populations in multiple countries show that the effect of carbonation in beverages has non-significant (statistically) effect on ihe health of the gastrointestinal tract.