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Drink Coffee, Lower Diabetes Risk?
Reported December 18, 2009
(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Individuals who drink coffee or tea, whether it
is caffeinated or decaf, appear to have a substantially lower risk of
developing type 2 diabetes.
By the year 2025, approximately 380 million individuals worldwide will be
affected by type 2 diabetes. "Despite considerable research attention, the
role of specific dietary and lifestyle factors remains uncertain, although
obesity and physical inactivity have consistently been reported to raise the
risk of diabetes mellitus," the authors were quoted as saying.
Rachel Huxley, D.Phil, of The George Institute for International Health,
University of Sydney, Australia, and colleagues looked at 18 studies,
involving 457,922 participants, which assessed the association between
coffee consumption and diabetes risk. The studies were published between
1966 and 2009. Six of the studies included information about decaffeinated
coffee, and seven studies also reported on tea consumption.
When the authors combined and analyzed the data, they found that each
additional cup of coffee consumed in a day was associated with a 7 percent
reduction in the excess risk of diabetes. Individuals who drank three to
four cups per day had an approximately 25 percent lower risk than those who
drank between zero and two cups per day.
In addition, in the studies that assessed decaffeinated coffee consumption,
those who drank more than three to four cups per day had about a one-third
lower risk of diabetes than those who drank none. Those who drank more than
three to four cups of tea had a one-fifth lower risk than those who drank no
tea.
"That the apparent protective effect of tea and coffee consumption appears
to be independent of a number of potential confounding variables raises the
possibility of direct biological effects," according to the authors. The
authors noted that the association is unlikely to be solely related to
caffeine, but that other compounds in coffee and tea—including magnesium,
antioxidants known as lignans or chlorogenic acids—may be involved.
"If such beneficial effects were observed in interventional trials to be
real, the implications for the millions of individuals who have diabetes
mellitus, or who are at future risk of developing it, would be substantial,"
they concluded. "For example, the identification of the active components of
these beverages would open up new therapeutic pathways for the primary
prevention of diabetes mellitus. It could also be envisaged that we will
advise our patients most at risk for diabetes mellitus to increase their
consumption of tea and coffee in addition to increasing their levels of
physical activity and weight loss."
SOURCE: Archives of Internal Medicine, December 14/28, 2009 |
