Study suggests lower death risk for coffee lovers

Older people who reported drinking a few daily cups of coffee were less likely to die over the subsequent 14 years than were those who abstained from the beverage or rarely drank it, according to a U.S. study of 400,000 people.

In particular, coffee was tied to a lower risk of dying from heart disease, stroke, infections, injuries and accidents, the researchers said in a report published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

But they warned that the findings should be interpreted with caution because coffee habits were only measured at one point in time - and it's unclear what ingredients in java, exactly, could be tied to a longer life.

"We know that coffee has an effect on the brain, so it's possible that may play a role," said lead researcher Neal Freedman at the National Institutes of Health in Rockville, Maryland. "Or, it may have an effect on bone health."

Research on the long-term effects of coffee on various diseases has come to conflicting conclusions. Some studies suggest coffee drinkers are less likely to get diabetes, but others hint they may have a higher risk of heart disease.

"For those who do drink coffee, there's no reason to stop. Periodically someone will say it's bad, but I think this strengthens the view that it's not harmful," said Lawrence Krakoff, a cardiologist from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, who wasn't part of the study.

Association of Coffee Drinking with Total and Cause-Specific Mortality

Results
During 5,148,760 person-years of follow-up between 1995 and 2008, a total of 33,731 men and 18,784 women died. In age-adjusted models, the risk of death was increased among coffee drinkers. However, coffee drinkers were also more likely to smoke, and, after adjustment for tobacco-smoking status and other potential confounders, there was a significant inverse association between coffee consumption and mortality. Adjusted hazard ratios for death among men who drank coffee as compared with those who did not were as follows: 0.99 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.95 to 1.04) for drinking less than 1 cup per day, 0.94 (95% CI, 0.90 to 0.99) for 1 cup, 0.90 (95% CI, 0.86 to 0.93) for 2 or 3 cups, 0.88 (95% CI, 0.84 to 0.93) for 4 or 5 cups, and 0.90 (95% CI, 0.85 to 0.96) for 6 or more cups of coffee per day (P<0.001 for trend); the respective hazard ratios among women were 1.01 (95% CI, 0.96 to 1.07), 0.95 (95% CI, 0.90 to 1.01), 0.87 (95% CI, 0.83 to 0.92), 0.84 (95% CI, 0.79 to 0.90), and 0.85 (95% CI, 0.78 to 0.93) (P<0.001 for trend). Inverse associations were observed for deaths due to heart disease, respiratory disease, stroke, injuries and accidents, diabetes, and infections, but not for deaths due to cancer. Results were similar in subgroups, including persons who had never smoked and persons who reported very good to excellent health at baseline.