Coffee May Be Good For Your Liver
February 25, 2005
By The Associated Press
Coffee-Cancer Researchers in Japan have discovered
some eye-opening news about coffee: It may help prevent
the most common type of liver cancer.
A study of more than 90,000 Japanese found that people
who drank coffee daily or nearly every day had half
the liver cancer risk of those who never drank coffee.
The protective effect occurred in people who drank one
to two cups a day and increased at three to four cups.
Animal studies have suggested a protective association
of coffee with liver cancer, so the research team led
by Monami Inoue of the National Cancer Center in Tokyo
analyzed a 10-year public health study to determine
coffee use by people diagnosed with liver cancer and
people who did not have cancer.
They found the likely occurrence of liver cancer in
people who never or almost never drank coffee was 547.2
cases per 100,000 people over 10 years.
But for people who drank coffee daily the risk was
214.6 cases per 100,000, the researchers report in this
week's issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
They were unable to compare the effect of regular and
decaffeinated coffee, however, because decaf is rarely
consumed in Japan.
The caffeine in coffee has been shown in other studies
to prompt mental alertness in many drinkers, although
it makes some people nervous. Some studies have suggested
caffeine aggravates symptoms of menopause or intensifies
the side effects of some antibiotics. Heavy caffeine
use has been linked to miscarriage. But studies have
also shown that a skin cream spiked with caffeine lowers
the risk of skin cancer in mice.
"It's an excellent, interesting and provocative
study and their conclusions seem justified," commented
Dr. R. Palmer Beasley of the University of Texas M.D.
Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
"It will provoke a lot of new work here,"
said Beasley, who was not part of the research group.
The American Cancer Society estimates that 18,920 new
cases of liver cancer were diagnosed in the United States
last year and some 14,270 people died of the illness.
Causes include hepatitis, cirrhosis, excess alcohol
consumption and diseases causing chronic inflammation
of the liver.
While the study found a statistically significant relationship
between drinking coffee and having less liver cancer,
the authors note that it needs to be repeated in other
groups.
The reason for the reduction remains unclear. Inoue's
team noted that coffee contains large amounts of antioxidants,
and several animal studies have indicated those compounds
have the potential to inhibit cancer in the liver.
In their study, the team also looked at green tea,
which contains different antioxidants, and they found
no association between drinking the tea and liver cancer
rates.
"Other unidentified substances may also be responsible"
for the reduction in cancers, they said.
A separate study reported in the same issue of the
journal reported no relationship between drinking caffeinated
coffee or tea and the rates of colon or rectal cancer.
However, that analysis did find a 52 percent decline
in rectal cancer among people who regularly drank two
or more cups of decaffeinated coffee.
In that study a team led by Karin B. Michels of Brigham
and Women's Hospital in Boston analyzed data from two
large studies - the Nurses' Health Study of women and
the Health Professionals' Follow-up Study involving
men. The analysis of nearly 2 million person-years found
1,438 cases of colorectal cancer.
While they did not find any association between cancer
rates and consumption of caffeinated coffee or tea,
people who regularly drank two or more cups per day
of decaffeinated coffee had about half the incidence
of rectal cancer as those who never drank decaf.
The rate of rectal cancer was 12 cases per 100,000
person-years among those who consumed two or more cups
of decaffeinated coffee per day. For those who never
drank decaffeinated coffee, the rate was 19 cases per
100,000 person-years.
That difference may, however, be due to differences
in lifestyle, the researchers commented, suggesting
that drinkers of decaffeinated coffee might be more
health-conscious overall.
Source:www.365gay.com
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