Dr. Avnish Jolly, Chandigarh:Drinking coffee was linked with a slightly lower rate of death from heart disease.
A new study suggests, but has not proved, that drinking coffee may slightly lower rates of premature deaths and drinking large amounts of coffee does not raise a person’s risk for dying sooner than expected.
The study published on June 17 in Annals of Internal Medicine showed regular coffee drinking (up to 6 cups per days) was not associated with elevated risk of deaths in either men or women. Previous studies found people who drank coffee were less likely to have liver cancer.
Esther Lopez-Garcia, Researcher, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid School of Medicine said that Coffee consumption has been linked to various beneficial and detrimental health effects, but data on its relation with death were lacking and coffee consumption was not associated with a higher risk of mortality in middle-aged men and women. The possibility of a modest benefit of coffee consumption on heart disease, cancer, and other causes of death needs to be further investigated.
Lopez-Garcia and researchers from Harvard School of Public Health followed 84,214 women who participated in the Nurses’ Health Study between 1980 and 2004 and 41,736 men who enrolled in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study from 1986 through 2004.Inetialy the study, participants had not been diagnosed with any cancer and heart disease. They were surveyed every two to four years about their habits of drinking coffee and other diet habits, smoking, and health conditions.
The researchers compared the rate of death from any cause, death from heart disease and death from cancer in subjects grouped based on their coffee-drinking habits. Among women, 2,368 deaths resulted from heart disease, 5,011 from cancer, and 3,716 from another cause. Among men, 2,049 deaths were due to heart disease, 2,491 due to cancer, and 2,348 due to another cause. The overall death rate was lower among the coffee drinkers than non-drinkers, the researchers found. The reduction was mostly seen in the deaths from heart disease. The associations held true after other risk factors were considered.
Specifically, women consuming 2 to 3 cups of caffeinated coffee per day were 25 percent less likely to die from heart disease during the follow-up compared to those who did not drink and 18 percent less likely to die from causes other than cancer or heart disease. But men who drank coffee were not at lower or higher risk of premature death compared to non-drinkers.
The editors of Annals of Internal Medicine caution that “ Misclassification of coffee consumption or confounding by other behavioral factors may account for these observations” suggesting that something else other than drinking coffee might actually cause the difference in the death rates.
A health observer affiliated with foodconsumer.org suggests that people should not count on drinking coffee to reduce their risk of premature death. In any case, he said, the current study is not a trial and there is no proof that drinking coffee can reduce the death risk by any measure.
For more information on coffee, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee
For more information on the study,
The Relationship of Coffee Consumption with Mortality http://www.annals.org/cgi/content/abstract/148/12/904