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Senior Citizen Health & Medicine
Coffee Drinking Associated with Lower Risk for
Alcohol-Related Liver Disease
If coffee prevents cirrhosis, senior citizens
should be safe, since most prefer coffee to sex
 June 13, 2006 Most senior citizens should be safe
from developing the liver disease alcoholic cirrhosis. New research says
coffee may reduce the risk of cirrhosis. An old study says senior
citizens had rather give up sex than their coffee. The new report is in
the June 12 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the
JAMA/Archives journals.
(See
story in sidebar on senior citizens and coffee.)
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Cirrhosis progressively destroys healthy liver
tissue and replaces it with scar tissue. Viruses such as hepatitis C can
cause cirrhosis, but long-term, heavy alcohol use is the most common
cause of the disease in developed countries, according to background
information in the article.
Most alcohol drinkers, however, never develop
cirrhosis; other factors that may play a role include genetics, diet and
nutrition, smoking and the interaction of alcohol with other toxins that
damage the liver.
Arthur L. Klatsky, M.D., and colleagues at the
Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program, Oakland, Calif., analyzed data
from 125,580 individuals (55,247 men and 70,333 women) who did not
report liver disease when they had baseline examinations, between 1978
and 1985.
Participants filled out a questionnaire to provide
information about how much alcohol, coffee and tea they drank per day
during the past year. Some of the individuals also had their blood
tested for levels of certain liver enzymes; the enzymes are released
into the bloodstream when the liver is diseased or damaged.
By the end of 2001, 330 participants had been
diagnosed with cirrhosis, including 199 with alcoholic cirrhosis. For
each cup of coffee they drank per day, participants were 22 percent less
likely to develop alcoholic cirrhosis. Drinking coffee was also
associated with a slight reduction in risk for other types of cirrhosis.
Among those who had their blood drawn, liver enzyme
levels were higher among individuals who drank more alcohol, indicating
liver disease or damage; however, those who drank both alcohol and
coffee had lower levels than those who drank alcohol but did not drink
coffee, with the strongest link among the heaviest drinkers.
Tea drinking was not related to reduced risk in the
study, suggesting that it is not caffeine that is responsible for the
relationship between coffee and reduced cirrhosis risk.
"Previous reports are disparate with respect to
whether the apparently protective coffee ingredient is caffeine; in our
opinion this issue is quite unresolved," the authors write.
The findings do not suggest that physicians
prescribe coffee to prevent alcoholic cirrhosis, the authors continue.
"Even if coffee is protective, the primary approach to reduction of
alcoholic cirrhosis is avoidance or cessation of heavy alcohol
drinking," they conclude.
"Assuming causality, the data do suggest that
coffee intake may partly explain the variability of cirrhosis risk in
alcohol consumers. Basic research about hepatic coffee-ethanol
interactions is warranted, but we should keep in mind that coffee might
represent only one of a number of potential cirrhosis risk modulators."
Editor's Note: This study was supported by a grant
from the Kaiser Foundation Research Institute. Data collection from 1978
to 1985 was supported by a grant from the Alcoholic Beverage Medical
Research Foundation, Baltimore, Md.
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