Friday, December 5, 2014

Coffee Consumption: Cancer Benefits



Breast cancer  
Prostate cancer   
Liver cancer
Oral/pharyngeal cancer   
Skin cancer   
Endometrial cancer
Head and neck cancers 
Colon cancer

Breast cancer 

More detailed findings confirm that coffee protects against breast cancer recurrence



A number of research studies have shown that coffee helps to protect against breast cancer. A new study led by Lund University, has confirmed that coffee inhibits the growth of tumours and reduces the risk of recurrence in women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer and treated with the drug tamoxifen.



The study, which is a follow-up of the results the researchers obtained two years ago, was carried out at Lund University and Skåne University Hospital, in collaboration with researchers in the UK.



"Now, unlike in the previous study, we have combined information about the patients' lifestyle and clinical data from 1090 breast cancer patients with studies on breast cancer cells. The study shows that among the over 500 women treated with tamoxifen, those who had drunk at least two cups of coffee a day had only half the risk of recurrence of those who drank less coffee or none at all", explain researchers Ann Rosendahl and Helena Jernström, who obtained the results in collaboration with Jeff Holly and his research team at University of Bristol.



"The study also shows that those who drank at least two cups of coffee a day had smaller tumours and a lower proportion of hormone-dependent tumours. We saw that this was already the case at the time of diagnosis."



In the cell study, the researchers looked more closely at two substances that usually occur in the coffee drunk in Sweden - caffeine and caffeic acid.



"The breast cancer cells reacted to these substances, especially caffeine, with reduced cell division and increased cell death, especially in combination with tamoxifen. This shows that these substances have an effect on the breast cancer cells and turn off signalling pathways that the cancer cells require to grow."



The researchers have demonstrated both in breast cancer patients and at cell level that coffee appears to reinforce the effect of treatment with tamoxifen, but emphasise the importance of taking prescribed medication.



"They are incredibly important, but if you like coffee and are also taking tamoxifen, there is no reason to stop drinking it. Just two cups a day is sufficient to make a difference."

Coffee may help prevent breast cancer returning

Drinking coffee could decrease the risk of breast cancer recurring in patients taking the widely used drug Tamoxifen, a study at Lund University in Sweden has found. Patients who took the pill, along with two or more cups of coffee daily, reported less than half the rate of cancer recurrence, compared with their non-coffee drinking, Tamoxifen-taking counterparts.

The team followed over 600 breast cancer patients from southern Sweden for an average of five years. Approximately 300 took Tamoxifen. The drug, a common hormone therapy after breast cancer surgery, reduces the risk of new tumours by blocking oestrogen receptors. How coffee interacts with the treatment, however, isn't immediately known.

"One theory we are working with is that coffee 'activates' Tamoxifen and makes it more efficient", says Maria Simonsson, doctoral student in Oncology at Lund University.

The Lund University researchers have previously linked coffee consumption to a decreased risk of developing certain types of breast cancer. Caffeine has also been shown to hamper the growth of cancer cells. The latest observational study involving coffee's role in cancer prevention and treatment underlines the need for more research, according to the team.

"We would like to know more about how lifestyle can interact with breast cancer treatment", says Helena Jernström, Associate Professor of Experimental Oncology at Lund University.

Coffee Reduces Breast Cancer Risk


Recently published research shows that coffee drinkers enjoy not only the taste of their coffee but also a reduced risk of cancer with their cuppa. More detailed research published May 10, 2011 in BioMed Central's open access journal Breast Cancer Research shows that drinking coffee specifically reduces the risk of antiestrogen-resistant estrogen-receptor (ER)-negative breast cancer.

Researchers from Sweden compared lifestyle factors and coffee consumption between women with breast cancer and age-matched women without. They found that coffee drinkers had a lower incidence of breast cancer than women who rarely drank coffee. However they also found that several lifestyle factors affected breast cancer rates, such as age at menopause, exercise, weight, education, and a family history of breast cancer. Once they had adjusted their data to account for these other factors they found that the protective effect of coffee on breast cancer was only measurable for ER-negative breast cancer.

The group from Karolinska Institutet explained that, "There is often conflicting information about the beneficial effects of coffee -- when we compared our results to that of a German study we discovered that their data showed the same trend, but the relationship was much weaker. We suggest that this may have something to do with the way the coffee was prepared, or the type of bean preferred. It is unlikely that the protective effect is due to phytoestrogens present in coffee since there was no reduction in the incidence of ER-positive cancer in this study."

So while it is evident that coffee may have beneficial effects in protecting women from ER negative breast cancer the exact mechanism and compounds involved are not yet clear and not all types of coffee are the same.


Prostate cancer


Four or more cups of coffee a day may keep prostate cancer recurrence and progression away

Coffee consumption is associated with a lower risk of prostate cancer recurrence and progression, according to a new study by Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center scientists in Cancer Causes & Control.

Corresponding author Janet L. Stanford, Ph.D., co-director of the Program in Prostate Cancer Research in the Fred Hutch Public Health Sciences Division, conducted the study to determine whether the bioactive compounds in coffee and tea may prevent prostate cancer recurrence and delay progression of the disease.

Stanford and colleagues found that men who drank four or more cups of coffee per day experienced a 59 percent reduced risk of prostate cancer recurrence and/or progression as compared to those who drank only one or fewer cups per week.

They did not, however, find an association between coffee drinking and reduced mortality from prostate cancer, although the study included too few men who died of prostate cancer to address that issue separately.

First study to assess the link between tea and prostate cancer outcomes

Regarding tea consumption, the researchers did not find an associated reduction of prostate cancer recurrence and/or progression. The study also did not draw any conclusions regarding the impact of tea drinking on prostate-specific death.

“To our knowledge, our study is the first to investigate the potential association between tea consumption and prostate cancer outcomes,” the authors wrote. “It is important to note, however, that few patients in our cohort were regular tea drinkers and the highest category of tea consumption was one or more cups per day. The association should be investigated in future studies that have access to larger populations with higher levels of tea consumption.”

The population-based study involved 1,001 prostate cancer survivors, aged 35-74 years old at the time of diagnosis between 2002-2005, who were residents of King County, Wash. Participants answered questions regarding their diet and beverage consumption two years prior to prostate cancer diagnosis using a validated food frequency questionnaire, and were interviewed about demographic and lifestyle information, family history of cancer, medication use and prostate cancer screening history.

The researchers followed up with patients more than five years after diagnosis to ascertain whether the prostate cancer had recurred and/or progressed. Those who were still living, willing to be contacted and had been diagnosed with non-metastatic cancer were included in the follow-up effort.

Of the original 1,001 patients in the cohort, 630 answered questions regarding coffee intake, fit the follow-up criteria and were included in the final analysis. Of those, 61 percent of the men consumed at least one cup of coffee per day and 12 percent consumed the highest amount: four or more cups per day.

The study also evaluated daily coffee consumption in relation to prostate cancer-specific death in 894 patients using data from the initial food frequency questionnaire. After the median follow-up period of eight-and-a-half years, 125 of the men had died, including 38 specifically from prostate cancer. Daily coffee consumption was not associated with prostate cancer-specific mortality or other-cause mortality, but with few deaths these analyses were limited.

“Our study differs from previous ones because we used a composite definition of prostate cancer recurrence/progression,” said first author Milan Geybels, a doctoral student at Maastricht University in the Netherlands who was a graduate student in Stanford’s Prostate Studies group at Fred Hutch when the study was conducted. “We used detailed information on follow-up prostate-specific antigen levels, use of secondary treatment for prostate cancer and data from scans and biopsies to assess occurrence of metastases and cause-specific mortality during follow up. Using these detailed data, we could determine whether a patient had evidence of prostate cancer recurrence or progression.”

The results are consistent with findings from Harvard’s Health Professionals Follow-up Study, which found that men who drank six or more cups of coffee per day had a 60 percent decreased risk of metastatic/lethal prostate cancer as compared to coffee abstainers.

Further research is required to understand the mechanisms underlying the results of the study, but biological activities associated with consumption of phytochemical compounds found in coffee include anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects and modulation of glucose metabolism. These naturally occurring compounds include:

Caffeine, which has properties that inhibit cell growth and encourage apoptosis, or programmed cell death. Previous studies have found that caffeine consumption may reduce the risk of several cancer types, including basal-cell carcinoma, glioma (a cancer of the brain and central nervous system) and ovarian cancer.

Additional studies needed to confirm whether coffee can prevent cancer recurrence

The researchers emphasize that coffee or specific coffee components cannot be recommended for secondary prevention of prostate cancer before the preventive effect has been demonstrated in a randomized clinical trial. Further, there’s ongoing debate about which components in coffee are anti-carcinogenic, and additional large, prospective studies are needed to confirm whether coffee intake is beneficial for secondary prevention.

Coffee drinking may even be problematic for some men, Geybels said.

“Although coffee is a commonly consumed beverage, we have to point out that increasing one’s coffee intake may be harmful for some men. For instance, men with hypertension may be vulnerable to the adverse effects of caffeine in coffee. Or, specific components in coffee may raise serum cholesterol levels, posing a possible threat to coronary health. Patients who have questions or concerns about their coffee intake should discuss them with their general practitioner,” he said.

The investigators also noted limits to their study, which included a lack of data on how coffee consumption might have changed following diagnosis, whether the coffee that participants consumed was caffeinated or decaffeinated, and how the coffee was prepared (espresso, boiled or filtered), a factor that may affect the bioactive properties of the brew.

Coffee Consumption Associated with Reduced Risk of Advanced Prostate Cancer


While it is too early for physicians to start advising their male patients to take up the habit of regular coffee drinking, data presented at the American Association for Cancer Research Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research Conference revealed a strong inverse association between coffee consumption and the risk of lethal and advanced prostate cancers.

“Coffee has effects on insulin and glucose metabolism as well as sex hormone levels, all of which play a role in prostate cancer. It was plausible that there may be an association between coffee and prostate cancer,” said Kathryn M. Wilson, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow at the Channing Laboratory, Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health.

In a prospective investigation, Wilson and colleagues found that men who drank the most coffee had a 60 percent lower risk of aggressive prostate cancer than men who did not drink any coffee. This is the first study of its kind to look at both overall risk of prostate cancer and risk of localized, advanced and lethal disease.

“Few studies have looked prospectively at this association, and none have looked at coffee and specific prostate cancer outcomes,” said Wilson. “We specifically looked at different types of prostate cancer, such as advanced vs. localized cancers or high-grade vs. low-grade cancers.”

Caffeine is actually not the key factor in this association, according to Wilson. The researchers are unsure which components of the beverage are most important, as coffee contains many biologically active compounds like antioxidants and minerals.

Using the Health Professionals’ Follow-Up Study, the researchers documented the regular and decaffeinated coffee intake of nearly 50,000 men every four years from 1986 to 2006; 4,975 of these men developed prostate cancer over that time. They also examined the cross-sectional association between coffee consumption and levels of circulating hormones in blood samples collected from a subset of men in the cohort.

“Very few lifestyle factors have been consistently associated with prostate cancer risk, especially with risk of aggressive disease, so it would be very exciting if this association is confirmed in other studies,” said Wilson. “Our results do suggest there is no reason to stop drinking coffee out of any concern about prostate cancer.”

This association might also help understand the biology of prostate cancer and possible chemoprevention measures.


Liver Cancer

Study Links Coffee to Lower Liver Cancer Risk

A new study suggests that people who drink at least a cup a day have a lower risk of liver cancer compared to those who only indulge occasionally.

The study was to be presentedy at the 2014 meeting of the American Association of Cancer Researchers in San Diego. Research presented at meetings should be viewed as preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed medical journal.

When the study started in the 1990s, researchers asked nearly 180,000 adults of different racial and ethnic backgrounds about their coffee drinking and other lifestyle habits.

Study participants have now been tracked for as long as 18 years, and researchers have kept tabs on how many have developed hepatocellular carcinoma, the most common kind of liver cancer. So far, 498 study participants have been diagnosed.

People who said they drank one to three cups of coffee a day had a 29 percent reduced risk of liver cancer compared to those who drank six cups or less each week. And more was apparently better: People who regularly had more than four cups of coffee a day had a 42 percent reduced risk, according to the study.

To put that in perspective, one in 81 men and one in 196 women will get liver cancer over the course of their lives, according to the American Cancer Society. A 29 percent risk reduction lowers the odds of that diagnosis to one in 104 for men and one in 253 for women.

What's more, those reductions held even after researchers accounted for other things known to increase a person's risk for liver cancer such as age, obesity, smoking, drinking, sex and diabetes.

However, the study was only designed to show association, not to prove a cause-and-effect relationship. There may be something else common to coffee drinkers that also reduces cancer risk.

Still, it's not the first study to uncover such a link.

A review published last year in the journal Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, which combined the results of 16 different studies involving more than 3,200 patients, concluded that drinking more than three cups of coffee a day might cut the risk of liver cancer by as much as 50 percent.

One expert praised the most recent research.

"This is a really well-done study," said Susan Gapstur, vice president of epidemiology for the American Cancer Society. "It adds to the growing body of evidence that coffee might be associated with a lower risk for a number of cancers."

Beyond liver cancer, studies have suggested that coffee may be tied to reduced risk for head and neck cancers, colorectal cancers, prostate cancer, and bladder, endometrial, esophageal and pancreatic cancers.

What researchers don't yet understand is how coffee may ward off cancer.

"That's what everybody wants to know," said study author V. Wendy Setiawan, an assistant professor in the department of preventive medicine at the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center in Los Angeles.

Setiawan says coffee has close to 100 active compounds including antioxidants, polyphenols and caffeine. It's also known to affect liver enzymes.

"At this time, I don't think anybody has any idea what compound is protective," she said.


Coffee consumption reduces risk of liver cancer


Coffee consumption reduces risk of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the most common type of liver cancer, by about 40 percent, according to an up-to-date meta-analysis published in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, the official clinical practice journal of the American Gastroenterological Association. Further, some data indicate that three cups of coffee per day reduce liver cancer risk by more than 50 percent.

"Our research confirms past claims that coffee is good for your health, and particularly the liver," said Carlo La Vecchia, MD, study author from the department of epidemiology, Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche "Mario Negri," and department of clinical sciences and community health, Università degli Studi di Milan, Italy. "The favorable effect of coffee on liver cancer might be mediated by coffee's proven prevention of diabetes, a known risk factor for the disease, or for its beneficial effects on cirrhosis and liver enzymes."

Researchers performed a meta-analysis of articles published from 1996 through September 2012, ultimately studying 16 high-quality studies and a total of 3,153 cases. This research fills an important gap as the last meta-analysis was published in 2007, and since then there has been data published on more than 900 cases of HCC.

Despite the consistency of results across studies, time periods and populations, it is difficult to establish whether the association between coffee drinking and HCC is causal, or if this relationship may be partially attributable to the fact that patients with liver and digestive diseases often voluntarily reduce their coffee intake.

"It remains unclear whether coffee drinking has an additional role in liver cancer prevention," added Dr. La Vecchia. "But, in any case, such a role would be limited as compared to what is achievable through the current measures."

Primary liver cancers are largely avoidable through hepatitis B virus vaccination, control of hepatitis C virus transmission and reduction of alcohol drinking. These three measures can, in principle, avoid more than 90 percent of primary liver cancer worldwide.

Liver cancer is the sixth most common cancer in the world, and the third most common cause of cancer death. HCC is the main type of liver cancer, accounting for more than 90 percent of cases worldwide. Chronic infections with hepatitis B and C viruses are the main causes of liver cancer; other relevant risk factors include alcohol, tobacco, obesity and diabetes.



Higher Coffee Consumption Associated with Lower Liver Cancer Risk

A large, prospective population-based study confirms an inverse relationship between coffee consumption and liver cancer risk. The study also found that higher levels of gamma-glutamyltransferase (GGT) in the blood were associated with an increased risk of developing the disease. These findings are published in Hepatology, a journal published by John Wiley & Sons on behalf of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD).

Researchers led by Gang Hu at the University of Helsinki set out to examine the associations between coffee consumption and serum GGT with the risk of liver cancer in a large prospective cohort. Residents of Finland drink more coffee per capita than the Japanese, Americans, Italians, and other Europeans, so Hu and colleagues studied 60,323 Finnish participants ages 25 to 74 who were cancer-free at baseline. The Finns were included in seven independent cross-sectional population surveys conducted between 1972 and 2002 and followed up through June 2006.

The participants completed a mail-in questionnaire about their medical history, socioeconomic factors and dietary and lifestyle habits. For a subset of participants, clinical data was available, including serum levels of GGT. Data on subsequent cancer diagnoses was collected from the country-wide Finnish Cancer Registry.

Based on their answers to the question: “How many cups of coffee do you drink daily?” the participants were divided into five categories: 0-1 cup, 2-3 cups, 4-5 cups, 6-7 cups, and 8 or more cups per day. After a median follow-up period of 19.3 years, 128 participants were diagnosed with liver cancer.

The researchers noted a significant inverse association between coffee drinking and the risk of primary liver cancer. They found that the multivariable hazards ratio of liver cancer dropped for each group that drank more coffee. It fell from 1.00, to .66, to .44, to .38 to .32 respectively. “The biological mechanisms behind the association of coffee consumption with the risk of liver cancer are not known,” the authors point out.

They also found that high levels of serum GGT were associated with an increased risk of liver cancer. The hazard ratio of liver cancer for the highest vs. lowest quartile of serum GGT was 3.13. “Nevertheless,” they report, “the inverse association between coffee consumption and the risk of liver cancer was consistent in the subjects at any level of serum GGT.”

An accompanying editorial by Carlo La Vecchia of Milan says that Hu’s study solidly confirms the inverse relationship between coffee drinking and liver cancer risk, though we still don’t know if it is causal. “Furthermore, the study by Hu et al. provides original and important quantitative evidence that the levels of GGT are related to subsequent incidence of liver cancer, with an overall relative risk of 2.3,” he says.


La Vecchia notes, however, that, “It remains difficult, however, to translate the inverse relation between coffee drinking and liver cancer risk observed in epidemiological studies into potential implications for prevention of liver cancer by increasing coffee consumption.”






Oral/pharyngeal cancer 

Caffeinated coffee may reduce the risk of oral cancers


A new (2012) American Cancer Society study finds a strong inverse association between caffeinated coffee intake and oral/pharyngeal cancer mortality. The authors say people who drank more than four cups of caffeinated coffee per day were at about half the risk of death of these often fatal cancers compared to those who only occasionally or who never drank coffee. The study was published online in the American Journal of Epidemiology. The authors say more research is needed to elucidate the biologic mechanisms that could be at work.
Previous epidemiologic studies have suggested that coffee intake is associated with reduced risk of oral/pharyngeal cancer. To explore the finding further, researchers examined associations of caffeinated coffee, decaffeinated coffee, and tea intake with fatal oral/pharyngeal cancer in the Cancer Prevention Study II, a prospective U.S. cohort study begun in 1982 by the American Cancer Society.
Among 968,432 men and women who were cancer-free at enrollment, 868 deaths due to oral/pharyngeal cancer occurred during 26 years of follow-up. The researchers found consuming more than four cups of caffeinated coffee per day was associated with a 49 percent lower risk of oral/pharyngeal cancer death relative to no/occasional coffee intake (RR 0.51, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.40-0.64). A dose-related decline in relative risk was observed with each single cup per day consumed. The association was independent of sex, smoking status, or alcohol use. There was a suggestion of a similar link among those who drank more than two cups per day of decaffeinated coffee, although that finding was only marginally significant. No association was found for tea drinking.
The findings are novel in that they are based specifically upon fatal cases of oral/pharyngeal cancer occurring over a 26-year period in a population of prospectively-followed individuals who were cancer-free at enrollment in Cancer Prevention Study II.
"Coffee is one of the most widely consumed beverages in the world, and contains a variety of antioxidants, polyphenols, and other biologically active compounds that may help to protect against development or progression of cancers," said lead author Janet Hildebrand, MPH. "Although it is less common in the United States, oral/pharyngeal cancer is among the ten most common cancers in the world. Our finding strengthens the evidence of a possible protective effect of caffeinated coffee in the etiology and/or progression of cancers of the mouth and pharynx. It may be of considerable interest to investigate whether coffee consumption can lead to a better prognosis after oral/pharyngeal cancer diagnosis."

Skin cancer

Coffee consumption lowers risk of most common form of skin cancer


Increasing the number of cups of caffeinated coffee you drink could lower your risk of developing the most common form of skin cancer, basal cell carcinoma, according to a study published in Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

"Our data indicate that the more caffeinated coffee you consume, the lower your risk of developing basal cell carcinoma," said Jiali Han, Ph.D., associate professor at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School in Boston and Harvard School of Public Health.

"I would not recommend increasing your coffee intake based on these data alone," said Han. "However, our results add basal cell carcinoma to a list of conditions for which risk is decreased with increasing coffee consumption. This list includes conditions with serious negative health consequences such as type 2 diabetes and Parkinson's disease."

Basal cell carcinoma is the form of skin cancer most commonly diagnosed in the United States. Even though it is slow-growing, it causes considerable morbidity and places a burden on health care systems.

"Given the large number of newly diagnosed cases, daily dietary changes having any protective effect may have an impact on public health," said Han.

Han and his colleagues generated their results by conducting a prospective analysis of data from the Nurses' Health Study, a large and long-running study to aid in the investigation of factors influencing women's health, and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study, an analogous study for men.

Of the 112,897 participants included in the analyses, 22,786 developed basal cell carcinoma during the more than 20 years of follow-up in the two studies. An inverse association was observed between all coffee consumption and risk of basal cell carcinoma. Similarly, an inverse association was seen between intake of caffeine from all dietary sources (coffee, tea, cola and chocolate) and risk of basal cell carcinoma. However, consumption of decaffeinated coffee was not associated with a decreased risk of basal cell carcinoma.


Endometrial cancer

Coffee may protect against endometrial cancer


Long-term coffee consumption may be associated with a reduced risk for endometrial cancer, according to a recent study in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

Edward Giovannucci, M.D., Sc.D., professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, said coffee is emerging as a protective agent in cancers that are linked to obesity, estrogen and insulin.

"Coffee has already been shown to be protective against diabetes due to its effect on insulin," said Giovannucci, a senior researcher on the study. "So we hypothesized that we'd see a reduction in some cancers as well."

Giovannucci, along with Youjin Je, a doctoral candidate in his lab, and colleagues observed cumulative coffee intake in relation to endometrial cancer in 67,470 women who enrolled in the Nurses' Health Study.

During the course of 26 years of follow-up, researchers documented 672 cases of endometrial cancer.

Drinking more than four cups of coffee per day was linked with a 25 percent reduced risk for endometrial cancer. Drinking between two and three cups per day was linked with a 7 percent reduced risk.

A similar link was seen in decaffeinated coffee, where drinking more than two cups per day was linked with a 22 percent reduced risk for endometrial cancer.

Giovannucci said he hopes this study will lead to further inquiries about the effect of coffee on cancer because in this and similar studies, coffee intake is self-selected and not randomized.

"Coffee has long been linked with smoking, and if you drink coffee and smoke, the positive effects of coffee are going to be more than outweighed by the negative effects of smoking," said Giovannucci. "However, laboratory testing has found that coffee has much more antioxidants than most vegetables and fruits."


Coffee Reduces Breast Cancer Risk


Recently published research shows that coffee drinkers enjoy not only the taste of their coffee but also a reduced risk of cancer with their cuppa. More detailed research published May 10, 2011 in BioMed Central's open access journal Breast Cancer Research shows that drinking coffee specifically reduces the risk of antiestrogen-resistant estrogen-receptor (ER)-negative breast cancer.

Researchers from Sweden compared lifestyle factors and coffee consumption between women with breast cancer and age-matched women without. They found that coffee drinkers had a lower incidence of breast cancer than women who rarely drank coffee. However they also found that several lifestyle factors affected breast cancer rates, such as age at menopause, exercise, weight, education, and a family history of breast cancer. Once they had adjusted their data to account for these other factors they found that the protective effect of coffee on breast cancer was only measurable for ER-negative breast cancer.

The group from Karolinska Institutet explained that, "There is often conflicting information about the beneficial effects of coffee -- when we compared our results to that of a German study we discovered that their data showed the same trend, but the relationship was much weaker. We suggest that this may have something to do with the way the coffee was prepared, or the type of bean preferred. It is unlikely that the protective effect is due to phytoestrogens present in coffee since there was no reduction in the incidence of ER-positive cancer in this study."

So while it is evident that coffee may have beneficial effects in protecting women from ER negative breast cancer the exact mechanism and compounds involved are not yet clear and not all types of coffee are the same.


Coffee may protect against head and neck cancers


Data on the effects of coffee on cancer risk have been mixed. However, results of a recent study add to the brewing evidence that drinking coffee protects against cancer, this time against head and neck cancer.

Full study results were published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

Using information from a pooled-analysis of nine studies collected by the International Head and Neck Cancer Epidemiology (INHANCE) consortium, participants who were regular coffee drinkers, that is, those who drank an estimated four or more cups a day, compared with those who were non-drinkers, had a 39 percent decreased risk of oral cavity and pharynx cancers combined.

Data on decaffeinated coffee was too sparse for detailed analysis, but indicated no increased risk. Tea intake was not associated with head and neck cancer risk.

The association is more reliable among those who are frequent, regular coffee drinkers, consuming more than four cups of coffee a day.

"Since coffee is so widely used and there is a relatively high incidence and low survival rate of these forms of cancers, our results have important public health implications that need to be further addressed," said lead researcher Mia Hashibe, Ph.D., assistant professor in the department of family and preventive medicine at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, and a Huntsman Cancer Institute investigator.

"What makes our results so unique is that we had a very large sample size, and since we combined data across many studies, we had more statistical power to detect associations between cancer and coffee," she said.

At the AACR Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research Conference last December, researchers from Harvard presented data that showed a strong inverse association between coffee consumption and the risk of lethal and advanced prostate cancers — men who drank the most coffee had a 60 percent lower risk of aggressive prostate cancer than men who did not drink any coffee.

More recently, results of another study published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention showed a decreased risk of gliomas, or brain tumors, associated with coffee. This association was found among those who drank five or more cups of coffee or tea a day, according the researchers from the Imperial College, London.

Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention editorial board member Johanna W. Lampe, Ph.D., R.D., believes this current analysis by Hashibe and colleagues provides strong, additional evidence for an association between caffeinated coffee drinking and cancer risk.

"The fact that this was seen for oral and pharyngeal cancers, but not laryngeal cancers, provides some evidence as to a possible specificity of effect," said Lampe, who is a full member and associate division director in the division of public health sciences at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle., Wash.

"These findings provide further impetus to pursue research to understand the role of coffee in head and neck cancer prevention," she added. Lampe is not associated with this study.

Additional research is warranted to characterize the importance of timing and duration of exposure and possible mechanisms of action, according to Hashibe.


Coffee Consumption Associated with Reduced Risk of Advanced Prostate Cancer


While it is too early for physicians to start advising their male patients to take up the habit of regular coffee drinking, data presented at the American Association for Cancer Research Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research Conference revealed a strong inverse association between coffee consumption and the risk of lethal and advanced prostate cancers.

“Coffee has effects on insulin and glucose metabolism as well as sex hormone levels, all of which play a role in prostate cancer. It was plausible that there may be an association between coffee and prostate cancer,” said Kathryn M. Wilson, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow at the Channing Laboratory, Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health.

In a prospective investigation, Wilson and colleagues found that men who drank the most coffee had a 60 percent lower risk of aggressive prostate cancer than men who did not drink any coffee. This is the first study of its kind to look at both overall risk of prostate cancer and risk of localized, advanced and lethal disease.

“Few studies have looked prospectively at this association, and none have looked at coffee and specific prostate cancer outcomes,” said Wilson. “We specifically looked at different types of prostate cancer, such as advanced vs. localized cancers or high-grade vs. low-grade cancers.”

Caffeine is actually not the key factor in this association, according to Wilson. The researchers are unsure which components of the beverage are most important, as coffee contains many biologically active compounds like antioxidants and minerals.

Using the Health Professionals’ Follow-Up Study, the researchers documented the regular and decaffeinated coffee intake of nearly 50,000 men every four years from 1986 to 2006; 4,975 of these men developed prostate cancer over that time. They also examined the cross-sectional association between coffee consumption and levels of circulating hormones in blood samples collected from a subset of men in the cohort.

“Very few lifestyle factors have been consistently associated with prostate cancer risk, especially with risk of aggressive disease, so it would be very exciting if this association is confirmed in other studies,” said Wilson. “Our results do suggest there is no reason to stop drinking coffee out of any concern about prostate cancer.”

This association might also help understand the biology of prostate cancer and possible chemoprevention measures.


Higher Coffee Consumption Associated with Lower Liver Cancer Risk

A large, prospective population-based study confirms an inverse relationship between coffee consumption and liver cancer risk. The study also found that higher levels of gamma-glutamyltransferase (GGT) in the blood were associated with an increased risk of developing the disease. These findings are published in Hepatology, a journal published by John Wiley & Sons on behalf of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD).

Researchers led by Gang Hu at the University of Helsinki set out to examine the associations between coffee consumption and serum GGT with the risk of liver cancer in a large prospective cohort. Residents of Finland drink more coffee per capita than the Japanese, Americans, Italians, and other Europeans, so Hu and colleagues studied 60,323 Finnish participants ages 25 to 74 who were cancer-free at baseline. The Finns were included in seven independent cross-sectional population surveys conducted between 1972 and 2002 and followed up through June 2006.

The participants completed a mail-in questionnaire about their medical history, socioeconomic factors and dietary and lifestyle habits. For a subset of participants, clinical data was available, including serum levels of GGT. Data on subsequent cancer diagnoses was collected from the country-wide Finnish Cancer Registry.

Based on their answers to the question: “How many cups of coffee do you drink daily?” the participants were divided into five categories: 0-1 cup, 2-3 cups, 4-5 cups, 6-7 cups, and 8 or more cups per day. After a median follow-up period of 19.3 years, 128 participants were diagnosed with liver cancer.

The researchers noted a significant inverse association between coffee drinking and the risk of primary liver cancer. They found that the multivariable hazards ratio of liver cancer dropped for each group that drank more coffee. It fell from 1.00, to .66, to .44, to .38 to .32 respectively. “The biological mechanisms behind the association of coffee consumption with the risk of liver cancer are not known,” the authors point out.

They also found that high levels of serum GGT were associated with an increased risk of liver cancer. The hazard ratio of liver cancer for the highest vs. lowest quartile of serum GGT was 3.13. “Nevertheless,” they report, “the inverse association between coffee consumption and the risk of liver cancer was consistent in the subjects at any level of serum GGT.”

An accompanying editorial by Carlo La Vecchia of Milan says that Hu’s study solidly confirms the inverse relationship between coffee drinking and liver cancer risk, though we still don’t know if it is causal. “Furthermore, the study by Hu et al. provides original and important quantitative evidence that the levels of GGT are related to subsequent incidence of liver cancer, with an overall relative risk of 2.3,” he says.


La Vecchia notes, however, that, “It remains difficult, however, to translate the inverse relation between coffee drinking and liver cancer risk observed in epidemiological studies into potential implications for prevention of liver cancer by increasing coffee consumption.”




Regular consumption of caffeinated coffee may help prevent the return of colon cancer after treatment and improve the chances of a cure, according to a new, large study from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute that reported this striking association for the first time.
The patients, all of them treated with surgery and chemotherapy for stage III colon cancer, had the greatest benefit from consuming four or more cups of coffee a day (about 460 milligrams of caffeine), according to the study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. These patients were 42 percent less likely to have their cancer return than non-coffee drinkers, and were 33 percent less likely to die from cancer or any other cause.

Two to three cups of coffee daily had a more modest benefit, while little protection was associated with one cup or less, reported the researchers, led by Charles Fuchs, MD, MPH, director of the Gastrointestinal Cancer Center at Dana-Farber. First author is Brendan J. Guercio, MD, also of Dana-Farber.

The study included nearly 1,000 patients who filled out dietary pattern questionnaires early in the study, during chemotherapy and again about a year later. This "prospective" design eliminated patients' need to recall their coffee-drinking habits years later -- a source of potential bias in many observational studies.

"We found that coffee drinkers had a lower risk of the cancer coming back and a significantly greater survival and chance of a cure," Fuchs said. Most recurrences happen within five years of treatment and are uncommon after that, he noted. In patients with stage III disease, the cancer has been found in the lymph nodes near the original tumor but there are no signs of further metastasis. Fuchs said these patients have about a 35 percent chance of recurrence.

As encouraging as the results appear to be, Fuchs is hesitant to make recommendations to patients until the results are confirmed in other studies. "If you are a coffee drinker and are being treated for colon cancer, don't stop," he said. "But if you're not a coffee drinker and wondering whether to start, you should first discuss it with your physician."

Fuchs said the study is the first to study an association between caffeinated coffee and risk of colon cancer recurrence. It adds to a number of recent studies suggesting that coffee may have protective effects against the development of several kinds of cancer, including reduced risks of postmenopausal breast cancer, melanoma, liver cancer, advanced prostate cancer.

Fuchs said the research focused on coffee and other dietary factors because coffee drinking -- in addition to possibly being protective against some cancers -- had been shown to reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes. Risk factors for diabetes -- obesity, a sedentary life style, a Western diet high in calories and sugar, and high levels of insulin -- are also implicated in colon cancer.

In analyzing the results of the new study, Fuchs and his colleagues discovered that the lowered risk of cancer recurrence and deaths was entirely due to caffeine and not other components of coffee. He said it's not clear why caffeine has this effect and the question needs further study. One hypothesis is that caffeine consumption increases the body's sensitivity to insulin so less of it is needed, which in turn may help reduce inflammation -- a risk factor for diabetes and cancer, Fuchs said.

Other than drinking coffee, Fuchs said, people can take other measures to reduce cancer risks -- avoiding obesity, exercising regularly, adopting a healthier diet, and eating nuts, which also reduce the risk of diabetes.

More detailed findings confirm that coffee protects against breast cancer recurrence



A number of research studies have shown that coffee helps to protect against breast cancer. A new study led by Lund University, has confirmed that coffee inhibits the growth of tumours and reduces the risk of recurrence in women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer and treated with the drug tamoxifen.



The study, which is a follow-up of the results the researchers obtained two years ago, was carried out at Lund University and Skåne University Hospital, in collaboration with researchers in the UK.



"Now, unlike in the previous study, we have combined information about the patients' lifestyle and clinical data from 1090 breast cancer patients with studies on breast cancer cells. The study shows that among the over 500 women treated with tamoxifen, those who had drunk at least two cups of coffee a day had only half the risk of recurrence of those who drank less coffee or none at all", explain researchers Ann Rosendahl and Helena Jernström, who obtained the results in collaboration with Jeff Holly and his research team at University of Bristol.



"The study also shows that those who drank at least two cups of coffee a day had smaller tumours and a lower proportion of hormone-dependent tumours. We saw that this was already the case at the time of diagnosis."



In the cell study, the researchers looked more closely at two substances that usually occur in the coffee drunk in Sweden - caffeine and caffeic acid.



"The breast cancer cells reacted to these substances, especially caffeine, with reduced cell division and increased cell death, especially in combination with tamoxifen. This shows that these substances have an effect on the breast cancer cells and turn off signalling pathways that the cancer cells require to grow."



The researchers have demonstrated both in breast cancer patients and at cell level that coffee appears to reinforce the effect of treatment with tamoxifen, but emphasise the importance of taking prescribed medication.



"They are incredibly important, but if you like coffee and are also taking tamoxifen, there is no reason to stop drinking it. Just two cups a day is sufficient to make a difference."

Coffee may help prevent breast cancer returning

Drinking coffee could decrease the risk of breast cancer recurring in patients taking the widely used drug Tamoxifen, a study at Lund University in Sweden has found. Patients who took the pill, along with two or more cups of coffee daily, reported less than half the rate of cancer recurrence, compared with their non-coffee drinking, Tamoxifen-taking counterparts.

The team followed over 600 breast cancer patients from southern Sweden for an average of five years. Approximately 300 took Tamoxifen. The drug, a common hormone therapy after breast cancer surgery, reduces the risk of new tumours by blocking oestrogen receptors. How coffee interacts with the treatment, however, isn't immediately known.

"One theory we are working with is that coffee 'activates' Tamoxifen and makes it more efficient", says Maria Simonsson, doctoral student in Oncology at Lund University.

The Lund University researchers have previously linked coffee consumption to a decreased risk of developing certain types of breast cancer. Caffeine has also been shown to hamper the growth of cancer cells. The latest observational study involving coffee's role in cancer prevention and treatment underlines the need for more research, according to the team.

"We would like to know more about how lifestyle can interact with breast cancer treatment", says Helena Jernström, Associate Professor of Experimental Oncology at Lund University.



Four or more cups of coffee a day may keep prostate cancer recurrence and progression away

Coffee consumption is associated with a lower risk of prostate cancer recurrence and progression, according to a new study by Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center scientists in Cancer Causes & Control.

Corresponding author Janet L. Stanford, Ph.D., co-director of the Program in Prostate Cancer Research in the Fred Hutch Public Health Sciences Division, conducted the study to determine whether the bioactive compounds in coffee and tea may prevent prostate cancer recurrence and delay progression of the disease.

Stanford and colleagues found that men who drank four or more cups of coffee per day experienced a 59 percent reduced risk of prostate cancer recurrence and/or progression as compared to those who drank only one or fewer cups per week.

They did not, however, find an association between coffee drinking and reduced mortality from prostate cancer, although the study included too few men who died of prostate cancer to address that issue separately.

First study to assess the link between tea and prostate cancer outcomes

Regarding tea consumption, the researchers did not find an associated reduction of prostate cancer recurrence and/or progression. The study also did not draw any conclusions regarding the impact of tea drinking on prostate-specific death.

“To our knowledge, our study is the first to investigate the potential association between tea consumption and prostate cancer outcomes,” the authors wrote. “It is important to note, however, that few patients in our cohort were regular tea drinkers and the highest category of tea consumption was one or more cups per day. The association should be investigated in future studies that have access to larger populations with higher levels of tea consumption.”

The population-based study involved 1,001 prostate cancer survivors, aged 35-74 years old at the time of diagnosis between 2002-2005, who were residents of King County, Wash. Participants answered questions regarding their diet and beverage consumption two years prior to prostate cancer diagnosis using a validated food frequency questionnaire, and were interviewed about demographic and lifestyle information, family history of cancer, medication use and prostate cancer screening history.

The researchers followed up with patients more than five years after diagnosis to ascertain whether the prostate cancer had recurred and/or progressed. Those who were still living, willing to be contacted and had been diagnosed with non-metastatic cancer were included in the follow-up effort.

Of the original 1,001 patients in the cohort, 630 answered questions regarding coffee intake, fit the follow-up criteria and were included in the final analysis. Of those, 61 percent of the men consumed at least one cup of coffee per day and 12 percent consumed the highest amount: four or more cups per day.

The study also evaluated daily coffee consumption in relation to prostate cancer-specific death in 894 patients using data from the initial food frequency questionnaire. After the median follow-up period of eight-and-a-half years, 125 of the men had died, including 38 specifically from prostate cancer. Daily coffee consumption was not associated with prostate cancer-specific mortality or other-cause mortality, but with few deaths these analyses were limited.

“Our study differs from previous ones because we used a composite definition of prostate cancer recurrence/progression,” said first author Milan Geybels, a doctoral student at Maastricht University in the Netherlands who was a graduate student in Stanford’s Prostate Studies group at Fred Hutch when the study was conducted. “We used detailed information on follow-up prostate-specific antigen levels, use of secondary treatment for prostate cancer and data from scans and biopsies to assess occurrence of metastases and cause-specific mortality during follow up. Using these detailed data, we could determine whether a patient had evidence of prostate cancer recurrence or progression.”

The results are consistent with findings from Harvard’s Health Professionals Follow-up Study, which found that men who drank six or more cups of coffee per day had a 60 percent decreased risk of metastatic/lethal prostate cancer as compared to coffee abstainers.

Further research is required to understand the mechanisms underlying the results of the study, but biological activities associated with consumption of phytochemical compounds found in coffee include anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects and modulation of glucose metabolism. These naturally occurring compounds include:

Caffeine, which has properties that inhibit cell growth and encourage apoptosis, or programmed cell death. Previous studies have found that caffeine consumption may reduce the risk of several cancer types, including basal-cell carcinoma, glioma (a cancer of the brain and central nervous system) and ovarian cancer.

Additional studies needed to confirm whether coffee can prevent cancer recurrence

The researchers emphasize that coffee or specific coffee components cannot be recommended for secondary prevention of prostate cancer before the preventive effect has been demonstrated in a randomized clinical trial. Further, there’s ongoing debate about which components in coffee are anti-carcinogenic, and additional large, prospective studies are needed to confirm whether coffee intake is beneficial for secondary prevention.

Coffee drinking may even be problematic for some men, Geybels said.

“Although coffee is a commonly consumed beverage, we have to point out that increasing one’s coffee intake may be harmful for some men. For instance, men with hypertension may be vulnerable to the adverse effects of caffeine in coffee. Or, specific components in coffee may raise serum cholesterol levels, posing a possible threat to coronary health. Patients who have questions or concerns about their coffee intake should discuss them with their general practitioner,” he said.

The investigators also noted limits to their study, which included a lack of data on how coffee consumption might have changed following diagnosis, whether the coffee that participants consumed was caffeinated or decaffeinated, and how the coffee was prepared (espresso, boiled or filtered), a factor that may affect the bioactive properties of the brew.

Study Links Coffee to Lower Liver Cancer Risk

A new study suggests that people who drink at least a cup a day have a lower risk of liver cancer compared to those who only indulge occasionally.

The study was to be presentedy at the 2014 meeting of the American Association of Cancer Researchers in San Diego. Research presented at meetings should be viewed as preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed medical journal.

When the study started in the 1990s, researchers asked nearly 180,000 adults of different racial and ethnic backgrounds about their coffee drinking and other lifestyle habits.

Study participants have now been tracked for as long as 18 years, and researchers have kept tabs on how many have developed hepatocellular carcinoma, the most common kind of liver cancer. So far, 498 study participants have been diagnosed.

People who said they drank one to three cups of coffee a day had a 29 percent reduced risk of liver cancer compared to those who drank six cups or less each week. And more was apparently better: People who regularly had more than four cups of coffee a day had a 42 percent reduced risk, according to the study.

To put that in perspective, one in 81 men and one in 196 women will get liver cancer over the course of their lives, according to the American Cancer Society. A 29 percent risk reduction lowers the odds of that diagnosis to one in 104 for men and one in 253 for women.

What's more, those reductions held even after researchers accounted for other things known to increase a person's risk for liver cancer such as age, obesity, smoking, drinking, sex and diabetes.

However, the study was only designed to show association, not to prove a cause-and-effect relationship. There may be something else common to coffee drinkers that also reduces cancer risk.

Still, it's not the first study to uncover such a link.

A review published last year in the journal Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, which combined the results of 16 different studies involving more than 3,200 patients, concluded that drinking more than three cups of coffee a day might cut the risk of liver cancer by as much as 50 percent.

One expert praised the most recent research.

"This is a really well-done study," said Susan Gapstur, vice president of epidemiology for the American Cancer Society. "It adds to the growing body of evidence that coffee might be associated with a lower risk for a number of cancers."

Beyond liver cancer, studies have suggested that coffee may be tied to reduced risk for head and neck cancers, colorectal cancers, prostate cancer, and bladder, endometrial, esophageal and pancreatic cancers.

What researchers don't yet understand is how coffee may ward off cancer.

"That's what everybody wants to know," said study author V. Wendy Setiawan, an assistant professor in the department of preventive medicine at the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center in Los Angeles.

Setiawan says coffee has close to 100 active compounds including antioxidants, polyphenols and caffeine. It's also known to affect liver enzymes.

"At this time, I don't think anybody has any idea what compound is protective," she said.


Coffee consumption reduces risk of liver cancer


Coffee consumption reduces risk of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the most common type of liver cancer, by about 40 percent, according to an up-to-date meta-analysis published in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, the official clinical practice journal of the American Gastroenterological Association. Further, some data indicate that three cups of coffee per day reduce liver cancer risk by more than 50 percent.

"Our research confirms past claims that coffee is good for your health, and particularly the liver," said Carlo La Vecchia, MD, study author from the department of epidemiology, Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche "Mario Negri," and department of clinical sciences and community health, Università degli Studi di Milan, Italy. "The favorable effect of coffee on liver cancer might be mediated by coffee's proven prevention of diabetes, a known risk factor for the disease, or for its beneficial effects on cirrhosis and liver enzymes."

Researchers performed a meta-analysis of articles published from 1996 through September 2012, ultimately studying 16 high-quality studies and a total of 3,153 cases. This research fills an important gap as the last meta-analysis was published in 2007, and since then there has been data published on more than 900 cases of HCC.

Despite the consistency of results across studies, time periods and populations, it is difficult to establish whether the association between coffee drinking and HCC is causal, or if this relationship may be partially attributable to the fact that patients with liver and digestive diseases often voluntarily reduce their coffee intake.

"It remains unclear whether coffee drinking has an additional role in liver cancer prevention," added Dr. La Vecchia. "But, in any case, such a role would be limited as compared to what is achievable through the current measures."

Primary liver cancers are largely avoidable through hepatitis B virus vaccination, control of hepatitis C virus transmission and reduction of alcohol drinking. These three measures can, in principle, avoid more than 90 percent of primary liver cancer worldwide.

Liver cancer is the sixth most common cancer in the world, and the third most common cause of cancer death. HCC is the main type of liver cancer, accounting for more than 90 percent of cases worldwide. Chronic infections with hepatitis B and C viruses are the main causes of liver cancer; other relevant risk factors include alcohol, tobacco, obesity and diabetes.


Caffeinated coffee may reduce the risk of oral cancers


A new (2012) American Cancer Society study finds a strong inverse association between caffeinated coffee intake and oral/pharyngeal cancer mortality. The authors say people who drank more than four cups of caffeinated coffee per day were at about half the risk of death of these often fatal cancers compared to those who only occasionally or who never drank coffee. The study was published online in the American Journal of Epidemiology. The authors say more research is needed to elucidate the biologic mechanisms that could be at work.
Previous epidemiologic studies have suggested that coffee intake is associated with reduced risk of oral/pharyngeal cancer. To explore the finding further, researchers examined associations of caffeinated coffee, decaffeinated coffee, and tea intake with fatal oral/pharyngeal cancer in the Cancer Prevention Study II, a prospective U.S. cohort study begun in 1982 by the American Cancer Society.
Among 968,432 men and women who were cancer-free at enrollment, 868 deaths due to oral/pharyngeal cancer occurred during 26 years of follow-up. The researchers found consuming more than four cups of caffeinated coffee per day was associated with a 49 percent lower risk of oral/pharyngeal cancer death relative to no/occasional coffee intake (RR 0.51, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.40-0.64). A dose-related decline in relative risk was observed with each single cup per day consumed. The association was independent of sex, smoking status, or alcohol use. There was a suggestion of a similar link among those who drank more than two cups per day of decaffeinated coffee, although that finding was only marginally significant. No association was found for tea drinking.
The findings are novel in that they are based specifically upon fatal cases of oral/pharyngeal cancer occurring over a 26-year period in a population of prospectively-followed individuals who were cancer-free at enrollment in Cancer Prevention Study II.
"Coffee is one of the most widely consumed beverages in the world, and contains a variety of antioxidants, polyphenols, and other biologically active compounds that may help to protect against development or progression of cancers," said lead author Janet Hildebrand, MPH. "Although it is less common in the United States, oral/pharyngeal cancer is among the ten most common cancers in the world. Our finding strengthens the evidence of a possible protective effect of caffeinated coffee in the etiology and/or progression of cancers of the mouth and pharynx. It may be of considerable interest to investigate whether coffee consumption can lead to a better prognosis after oral/pharyngeal cancer diagnosis."


Coffee consumption lowers risk of most common form of skin cancer


Increasing the number of cups of caffeinated coffee you drink could lower your risk of developing the most common form of skin cancer, basal cell carcinoma, according to a study published in Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

"Our data indicate that the more caffeinated coffee you consume, the lower your risk of developing basal cell carcinoma," said Jiali Han, Ph.D., associate professor at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School in Boston and Harvard School of Public Health.

"I would not recommend increasing your coffee intake based on these data alone," said Han. "However, our results add basal cell carcinoma to a list of conditions for which risk is decreased with increasing coffee consumption. This list includes conditions with serious negative health consequences such as type 2 diabetes and Parkinson's disease."

Basal cell carcinoma is the form of skin cancer most commonly diagnosed in the United States. Even though it is slow-growing, it causes considerable morbidity and places a burden on health care systems.

"Given the large number of newly diagnosed cases, daily dietary changes having any protective effect may have an impact on public health," said Han.

Han and his colleagues generated their results by conducting a prospective analysis of data from the Nurses' Health Study, a large and long-running study to aid in the investigation of factors influencing women's health, and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study, an analogous study for men.

Of the 112,897 participants included in the analyses, 22,786 developed basal cell carcinoma during the more than 20 years of follow-up in the two studies. An inverse association was observed between all coffee consumption and risk of basal cell carcinoma. Similarly, an inverse association was seen between intake of caffeine from all dietary sources (coffee, tea, cola and chocolate) and risk of basal cell carcinoma. However, consumption of decaffeinated coffee was not associated with a decreased risk of basal cell carcinoma.


Coffee may protect against endometrial cancer


Long-term coffee consumption may be associated with a reduced risk for endometrial cancer, according to a recent study in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

Edward Giovannucci, M.D., Sc.D., professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, said coffee is emerging as a protective agent in cancers that are linked to obesity, estrogen and insulin.

"Coffee has already been shown to be protective against diabetes due to its effect on insulin," said Giovannucci, a senior researcher on the study. "So we hypothesized that we'd see a reduction in some cancers as well."

Giovannucci, along with Youjin Je, a doctoral candidate in his lab, and colleagues observed cumulative coffee intake in relation to endometrial cancer in 67,470 women who enrolled in the Nurses' Health Study.

During the course of 26 years of follow-up, researchers documented 672 cases of endometrial cancer.

Drinking more than four cups of coffee per day was linked with a 25 percent reduced risk for endometrial cancer. Drinking between two and three cups per day was linked with a 7 percent reduced risk.

A similar link was seen in decaffeinated coffee, where drinking more than two cups per day was linked with a 22 percent reduced risk for endometrial cancer.

Giovannucci said he hopes this study will lead to further inquiries about the effect of coffee on cancer because in this and similar studies, coffee intake is self-selected and not randomized.

"Coffee has long been linked with smoking, and if you drink coffee and smoke, the positive effects of coffee are going to be more than outweighed by the negative effects of smoking," said Giovannucci. "However, laboratory testing has found that coffee has much more antioxidants than most vegetables and fruits."

Head and neck cancers

Coffee may protect against head and neck cancers


Data on the effects of coffee on cancer risk have been mixed. However, results of a recent study add to the brewing evidence that drinking coffee protects against cancer, this time against head and neck cancer.

Full study results were published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

Using information from a pooled-analysis of nine studies collected by the International Head and Neck Cancer Epidemiology (INHANCE) consortium, participants who were regular coffee drinkers, that is, those who drank an estimated four or more cups a day, compared with those who were non-drinkers, had a 39 percent decreased risk of oral cavity and pharynx cancers combined.

Data on decaffeinated coffee was too sparse for detailed analysis, but indicated no increased risk. Tea intake was not associated with head and neck cancer risk.

The association is more reliable among those who are frequent, regular coffee drinkers, consuming more than four cups of coffee a day.

"Since coffee is so widely used and there is a relatively high incidence and low survival rate of these forms of cancers, our results have important public health implications that need to be further addressed," said lead researcher Mia Hashibe, Ph.D., assistant professor in the department of family and preventive medicine at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, and a Huntsman Cancer Institute investigator.

"What makes our results so unique is that we had a very large sample size, and since we combined data across many studies, we had more statistical power to detect associations between cancer and coffee," she said.

At the AACR Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research Conference last December, researchers from Harvard presented data that showed a strong inverse association between coffee consumption and the risk of lethal and advanced prostate cancers — men who drank the most coffee had a 60 percent lower risk of aggressive prostate cancer than men who did not drink any coffee.

More recently, results of another study published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention showed a decreased risk of gliomas, or brain tumors, associated with coffee. This association was found among those who drank five or more cups of coffee or tea a day, according the researchers from the Imperial College, London.

Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention editorial board member Johanna W. Lampe, Ph.D., R.D., believes this current analysis by Hashibe and colleagues provides strong, additional evidence for an association between caffeinated coffee drinking and cancer risk.

"The fact that this was seen for oral and pharyngeal cancers, but not laryngeal cancers, provides some evidence as to a possible specificity of effect," said Lampe, who is a full member and associate division director in the division of public health sciences at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle., Wash.

"These findings provide further impetus to pursue research to understand the role of coffee in head and neck cancer prevention," she added. Lampe is not associated with this study.

Additional research is warranted to characterize the importance of timing and duration of exposure and possible mechanisms of action, according to Hashibe.





Regular consumption of caffeinated coffee may help prevent the return of colon cancer after treatment and improve the chances of a cure, according to a new, large study from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute that reported this striking association for the first time.
The patients, all of them treated with surgery and chemotherapy for stage III colon cancer, had the greatest benefit from consuming four or more cups of coffee a day (about 460 milligrams of caffeine), according to the study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. These patients were 42 percent less likely to have their cancer return than non-coffee drinkers, and were 33 percent less likely to die from cancer or any other cause.

Two to three cups of coffee daily had a more modest benefit, while little protection was associated with one cup or less, reported the researchers, led by Charles Fuchs, MD, MPH, director of the Gastrointestinal Cancer Center at Dana-Farber. First author is Brendan J. Guercio, MD, also of Dana-Farber.

The study included nearly 1,000 patients who filled out dietary pattern questionnaires early in the study, during chemotherapy and again about a year later. This "prospective" design eliminated patients' need to recall their coffee-drinking habits years later -- a source of potential bias in many observational studies.

"We found that coffee drinkers had a lower risk of the cancer coming back and a significantly greater survival and chance of a cure," Fuchs said. Most recurrences happen within five years of treatment and are uncommon after that, he noted. In patients with stage III disease, the cancer has been found in the lymph nodes near the original tumor but there are no signs of further metastasis. Fuchs said these patients have about a 35 percent chance of recurrence.

As encouraging as the results appear to be, Fuchs is hesitant to make recommendations to patients until the results are confirmed in other studies. "If you are a coffee drinker and are being treated for colon cancer, don't stop," he said. "But if you're not a coffee drinker and wondering whether to start, you should first discuss it with your physician."

Fuchs said the study is the first to study an association between caffeinated coffee and risk of colon cancer recurrence. It adds to a number of recent studies suggesting that coffee may have protective effects against the development of several kinds of cancer, including reduced risks of postmenopausal breast cancer, melanoma, liver cancer, advanced prostate cancer.

Fuchs said the research focused on coffee and other dietary factors because coffee drinking -- in addition to possibly being protective against some cancers -- had been shown to reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes. Risk factors for diabetes -- obesity, a sedentary life style, a Western diet high in calories and sugar, and high levels of insulin -- are also implicated in colon cancer.

In analyzing the results of the new study, Fuchs and his colleagues discovered that the lowered risk of cancer recurrence and deaths was entirely due to caffeine and not other components of coffee. He said it's not clear why caffeine has this effect and the question needs further study. One hypothesis is that caffeine consumption increases the body's sensitivity to insulin so less of it is needed, which in turn may help reduce inflammation -- a risk factor for diabetes and cancer, Fuchs said.

Other than drinking coffee, Fuchs said, people can take other measures to reduce cancer risks -- avoiding obesity, exercising regularly, adopting a healthier diet, and eating nuts, which also reduce the risk of diabetes.

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