Drinking more than five cans of soda a week was linked to significantly higher levels of violence in teenagers, according to a researched published Tuesday in the journal Injury Prevention.

Researchers, whose study was based on a survey of more than 1,800 Boston high school students, suggested that the link is perhaps due to the sugar or caffeine content of soft drinks. However there may be other factors unaccounted for in the analysis, researchers said.

They also acknowledged the chance that violent teens are driven more to soda and that additional research is needed to find the exact reason for the link.

The study involved 1,878 teenagers from Boston public high schools. They were asked how often they drank non-diet soft drinks and whether they had carried a weapon or engaged in physical violence with a peer.

The results showed that frequent soft drink consumption was associated with 9–15 percent more probability of engaging in aggressive actions, even after taking into account gender, age, race, body mass index, typical sleep patterns, tobacco use, alcohol use and having family dinners.

The study was published in the journal Injury Prevention. The authors are Sara Solnick of the University of Vermont department of economics and David Hemenway of the Harvard School of Public Health.