Pancreatic cancer in its early stages often does not show any manifestation that one has the deadly disease.
Even when it does, the symptoms often are vague such as back pain, loss of appetite and weight loss.
Common processed meat that is available in the market are bacon and sausage. According to research, eating one sausage a day or two rashers of bacon raises the risk of pancreatic cancer by twenty percent.
Scientists have found that even relatively small amounts of processed meat increase the chance of developing this deadly illness.
It found that eating processed meat increased the risk of pancreatic cancer. The risk increased by 19 percent for every 50g someone added to their daily diet this is equivalent to a few slices of ham or salami, a hot dog or sausage or two slices of bacon.
Having an extra 100g, just a small burger would increase the risk by 38 percent.
Pancreatic cancer has one of the worst survival rates of all cancers and only 3 per cent of patients live beyond five years.
But the risk posed by eating meat was substantially lower than for smoking, which was found to increase the likelihood of pancreatic cancer by 74 per cent.
‘So it’s important to understand what can increase the risk of this disease.’
The research, published in the British Journal of Cancer, analyzed the results of 11 other studies involving 6,000 patients with pancreatic cancer.
Dr. Rachel Thompson, the fund’s deputy head of science, said, “We will be re-examining the factors behind pancreatic cancer later this year as part of our Continuous Update Project, which should tell us more about the relationship between cancer of the pancreas and processed meat.
The World Cancer Research Fund has advised people to completely avoid processed meat.
