Drinking coffee does not change a person's risk of being
diagnosed with or dying from cancer. The research findings have
been published in the International Journal of Epidemiology. The
QIMR Berghofer study used cancer data drawn from the UK Biobank
cohort for more than 46,000 people who had been diagnosed with
most invasive cancer types, including about 7,000 people who
died from the disease. The genetic and preference information
from the people with cancer was compared to data from more than
270,000 others who had never been diagnosed with cancer.
Senior author and head
of QIMR Berghofer's Statistical Genetics Group, Associate
Professor Stuart MacGregor, said the study looked at data from
more than 300,000 people and showed drinking coffee every
day neither reduced nor increased a person's risk of
developing any cancer.
Associate Professor
MacGregor said, "We also know that a preference for coffee is
heritable. Our two-pronged research looked at whether cancer
rates differed among people with different levels of
self-reported coffee consumption, and whether the same trend was
seen when we replaced self-reported consumption with genetic
predisposition towards coffee consumption. We found there was no
real relationship between how many cups of coffee a person had a
day and if they developed any particular cancers."
"The study also ruled
out a link between coffee intake and dying from the disease."
In an August 2018
statement, the US Food and Drug Administration said current
science indicated that consuming coffee posed no significant
risk of cancer.