foodconsumer.org: Coffee may reduce risk of death from heart disease in women

Coffee may reduce risk of death from heart disease in women
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admin on 06/17/2008 23:08:00
 
The study, published June 17 in the Annals of Internal Medicine, showed that
regular coffee drinking (up to 6 cups per day) was not associated with elevated
risk of deaths in either men or women.
Better yet, drinking coffee was linked with a slightly lower rate of death from
heart disease.
Previous studies found that people who drank coffee were less likely to have
liver cancer.
"Coffee consumption has been linked to various beneficial and detrimental health
effects, but data on its relation with death were lacking," said Esther
Lopez-Garcia, PhD, the study's lead author, at Universidad Autonoma de Madrid
School of Medicine.
"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."
In the study, 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.
At the start of the study, participants had not been diagnosed with any cancer
or 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 other causes. Among men, 2,049 deaths were due to heart disease,
2,491 due to cancer, and 2,348 due to other causes.
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 coffee, 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.
Coffee drinking was not linked with cancer deaths either.
The editors the 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, read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee
For more information on the study, read The Relationship of Coffee Consumption
with Mortality
By David Liu, Ph.D., and edited by Heather Kelley.
Jun 17, 2008 - 11:46:44 AM