Women Drinking Large Amounts of Coffee May Lower
Their Risk of Death
Study finds coffee drinkers caffeinated and decaf -
with slightly lower death rates; men about even
Click to video - from Annals of Internal Medicine on two
current reports of interest to senior citizens.
1. People who drank more coffee were less likely to die.
2. Hearing loss is much more common in people with diabetes.
June 17, 2008 A new study published today in
Annals of Internal Medicine has good news for coffee drinkers: Regular
coffee drinking (up to 6 cups per day) is not associated with increased
deaths in either men or women. In fact, both caffeinated and
decaffeinated coffee consumption is associated with a somewhat smaller
rate of death from heart disease.
Coffee consumption has been linked to various
beneficial and detrimental health effects, but data on its relation with
death were lacking, says Esther Lopez-Garcia, PhD, the studys lead
author.
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.
Women
Women consuming two to three cups of caffeinated
coffee per day had a 25 percent lower risk of death from heart disease
during the follow-up period (which lasted from 1980 to 2004 and involved
84,214 women) as compared with non-consumers, and an 18 percent lower
risk of death caused by something other than cancer or heart disease as
compared with non-consumers during follow-up.
Men
For men, this level of consumption was associated
with neither a higher nor a lower risk of death during the follow-up
period (which lasted from 1986 to 2004 and involved 41,736 men).
The researchers analyzed data of 84,214 women who
had participated in the Nurses Health Study and 41,736 men who had
participated in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study. To be in the
current study, participants had to have been free of cancer and heart
disease at the start of those larger studies.
The study participants completed questionnaires
every two to four years that included questions about how frequently
they drank coffee, other diet habits, smoking, and health conditions.
The researchers then compared the frequency of
death from any cause, death due to heart disease, and death due to
cancer among people with different coffee-drinking habits.
Among women,
● 2,368 deaths were due to heart disease,
● 5,011 were due to cancer, and
● 3,716 were due to another cause.
Among men,
● 2,049 deaths were due to heart disease,
● 2,491 were due to cancer, and
● 2,348 were due to another cause.
While accounting for other risk factors, such as
body size, smoking, diet, and specific diseases, the researchers found
that people who drank more coffee were less likely to die during the
follow-up period. This was mainly because of lower risk for heart
disease deaths among coffee drinkers.
The researchers found no association between coffee
drinking and cancer deaths. These relationships did not seem to be
related to caffeine because people who drank decaffeinated coffee also
had lower death rates than people who did not drink coffee.
Editors Notes:
The editors of Annals of Internal Medicine caution
that the design of the study does not make it certain that coffee
decreases the chances of dying sooner than expected. Something else
about coffee drinkers might be protecting them. And some measurement
error in the assessment of coffee consumption is inevitable because
estimated consumption came from self-reports.
The study, The Relationship of Coffee Consumption
with Mortality, was supported by National Institutes of Health research
grants.
Annals of Internal Medicine is one of the most
widely cited peer-reviewed medical journals in the world. The journal
has been published for 81 years and accepts only 7 percent of the
original research studies submitted for publication. Annals of Internal
Medicine is published by the
American College of Physicians (ACP), the largest medical specialty
organization and the second-largest physician group in the United
States.
ACP members include 125,000 internal medicine
physicians (internists), related subspecialists, and medical students.
Internists specialize in the prevention, detection, and treatment of
illness in adults.
