Moderate consumption of caffeinated or decaffeinated coffee may lower the risk of type 2 diabetes in middle-aged and younger women, according to a new report.

Dr. Rob M. van Dam from the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, and colleagues evaluated the consumption of different types of coffee in relation to the development of type 2 diabetes in more than 88,000 US women followed in the Nurses Health Study II.

In general, higher coffee consumption, both caffeinated and decaffeinated, was associated with a lower risk of type 2 diabetes, the team reports in the medical journal Diabetes Care.

The reduction in risk was 13 percent with one cup of coffee per day, and as much as 47 percent with four or more cups.

The reduced risk of type 2 diabetes was limited to filtered coffee and instant coffee, the report indicates, whereas consumption of espresso or percolator coffee did not significantly reduce the risk.

“I would not recommend people to start consuming coffee to reduce their risk of type 2 diabetes,” van Dam told Reuters Health. Nevertheless, he added, “it seems that in general people drinking moderate amounts of paper-filtered coffee don’t have to worry about detrimental health effects.”

The team has recently seen “that coffee components other than caffeine may improve glucose metabolism,” van Dam added. “Therefore, studies that attempt to identify these coffee components would be of interest and could lead to the development or the selection of coffee types with greater health benefits.”

SOURCE: Diabetes Care, February 2006.