Could Coffee Decrease All-Cause Mortality Risk?

Consuming coffee on a regular basis may protect individuals from risk of death from many causes, including heart disease and diabetes, according to a 10-year study.

Previous research has shown an inverse association between coffee consumption and mortality, but data regarding cause-specific mortality is less available.

For their study, researchers followed 90,317 healthy adults followed between 1998 and 2009, all of whom self-reported coffee intake and other dietary and health information at baseline.
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By the end of the study, 8718 of the participants had died. After adjusting for potential confounders, including smoking, researchers found that coffee drinkers had lower hazard ratios for overall mortality.

Further, the risk of death appeared to be associated with the amount of coffee consumed. Risk of death was lowest among those who drank 4-5 cups of coffee per day, in both those drinking caffeinated and decaf coffee.

Coffee drinkers also had lower risk of death from heart disease, respiratory diseases, diabetes, pneumonia, influenza, and suicide, but not cancer, researchers noted.

“Coffee may reduce mortality risk by favorably affecting inflammation, lung function, insulin sensitivity, and depression,“ they concluded.

—Michael Potts

Reference:
Loftfield E, Freedman ND, Graubard BI, et al. Association of coffee consumption with overall and cause-specific mortality in a large us prospective cohort study. Am J Epidemiol. December 2015 [epub ahead of print]. doi: 10.1093/aje/kwv146.