The coffee, drank regularly and in not excessive quantities, it decreases the risk of general death and that associated with various diseases. This is confirmed by a large study published on Annals of Internal Medicine by researchers at Southern Medical University, in China, who analyzed the data contained in the large UK Biobank database, relating to over 171 thousand people with an average age of 55 without a diagnosis of cardiovascular disease or cancer, followed for at least seven years in the period between 2009 and 2018.
To all participants questions were asked about their eating and lifestyle habits such as smoking, alcohol consumption, physical activity and so on. During the observation period, over 3,100 deaths occurred in the sample, about 1,700 of which from cancer and 600 from cardiovascular disease. By checking for any differences between those who drank coffee and those who did not consume it and between those who preferred it bitter and those who added sugar or sweeteners, epidemiologists saw that consumption of any quantity of bitter coffee was associated with a protective effect against death from any cause between 16 and 21%, and that the same effect was visible for those who drank between 1.5 and 3.5 cups of sweetened coffee per day, with a reduction of around 30%. As for the sweeteners, however, the results were unclear and did not allow us to conclude anything definitive.
Magazine (one of the most important in medicine at an international level) also reports an editorial, in which several criticalities of this survey are highlighted, starting with the fact that, being the population under study that of the British, heavy drinkers of tea, as well as coffee , there may be some distortion. Furthermore, it is not taken into account that, while coffee drunk at home was considered ‘sweetened’ when a cup contained even a single teaspoon of sugar, coffee products consumed outside the home, which were not included in the study , not only can they increase the average daily amount of coffee consumed, but they are also much more sugary than the normal cup. Finally, it remains to be seen why a sweetened coffee would be more beneficial than a bitter one and why sweeteners have dubious effects. Nonetheless, the message to be drawn from it, writes Christina Wee, columnist for the Annalsis that doctors can stop advising their patients to avoid coffee, unless there are specific risks.
After all, this work is part of a trail that has seen several published in recent months and years, all or almost all of a positive sign. One of the last, very similar for the conclusions and the data on which it is based, was presented at the last congress of the American College of Cardiology by researchers from the University of Melbourne, Australia, who worked on the same data, however dividing them between those of those (in this case over 382,500 people) did not have a diagnosis of cardiovascular disease at the beginning of the survey, and those of those who did (about 34,200). Participants had an average age of 57 and were followed for at least ten years.
Looking for associations among those who did not have previous cardiovascular diseases and a series of diseases such as arrhythmias, strokes, heart attacks, and deaths associated with them, the authors noted in general a reduction in risk of between 10 and 15%, with a maximum of benefits for consumption between two and three cups a day. The same trend was seen among heart patients and, above all, there was no risk of arrhythmia or heartbeat irregularities, one of the events most often associated with coffee consumption; moreover, for some types, the decrease was around 20%.
According to the authors, it is necessary to understand which of the more than one hundred active components could have this protective action: many of them are already known to lower inflammation, improve liver and pancreas function, insulin sensitivity and metabolism. Caffeine does not seem to be the main culprit, also because a third analysis of the same data, this time divided according to the type of coffee (with caffeine or decaffeinated), did not reveal any difference. Even in this case, however, the conclusion is an invitation to doctors to stop advising against moderate consumption of coffee, even if you have cardiovascular disease.
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Roberto La Pira
science journalist