Scottsdale – Interesting new research, discussed in the Washington Post, and published in the journal Cancer Research, might help explain a linked between fructose intake with pancreatic cancer growth, one of the deadliest cancer types. Researchers said, in a study that challenges the common wisdom that all sugars are the same, that tumor cells fed both glucose and fructose used the two sugars in two different ways.

The team at the University of California Los Angeles found pancreatic cancer cells in lab dishes grew on both fructose and glucose, but used fructose to proliferate.

“These findings show that cancer cells can readily metabolize fructose to increase proliferation,” Anthony Heaney of UCLA’s Jonsson Cancer Center and colleagues wrote.

“They have major significance for cancer patients given dietary refined fructose consumption, and indicate that efforts to reduce refined fructose intake or inhibit fructose-mediated actions may disrupt cancer growth.”

Americans take in large amounts of fructose, mainly in high-fructose corn syrup, a mix of fructose and glucose that is used in soft drinks, bread and a range of other foods. Health experts and the fructose industry have debated whether high-fructose corn syrup and other ingredients have been helping make Americans fatter and less healthy.

Too much sugar of any kind not only adds pounds, but is also a key culprit in diabetes, heart disease and stroke, according to the American Heart Association. Several states have weighed a tax on sweetened soft drinks, but beverage makers have successfully opposed efforts to tax soda.

“Importantly, fructose and glucose metabolism are quite different,” Heaney’s team wrote.