Association of Coffee Consumption with Total and Cause-Specific Mortality in Three Large Prospective Cohorts

CIRCULATIONAHA.115.017341 Published online before print November 16, 2015,
doi: 10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.115.017341

http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/early/2015/11/10/CIRCULATIONAHA.115.017341.abstract

Background—The association between consumption of caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee and risk of mortality remains inconclusive.

Methods and Results—We examined the associations of consumption of total, caffeinated, and decaffeinated coffee with risk of subsequent total and cause-specific mortality among 74,890 women in the Nurses' Health Study (NHS), 93,054 women in the NHS 2, and 40,557 men in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study. Coffee consumption was assessed at baseline using a semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire. During 4,690,072 person-years of follow-up, 19,524 women and 12,432 men died. Consumption of total, caffeinated, and decaffeinated coffee were non-linearly associated with mortality. Compared to non-drinkers, coffee consumption one to five cups/d was associated with lower risk of mortality, while coffee consumption more than five cups/d was not associated with risk of mortality. However, when restricting to never smokers, compared to non-drinkers, the HRs of mortality were 0.94 (0.89 to 0.99) for ≤ 1 cup/d, 0.92 (0.87 to 0.97) for 1.1-3 cups/d, 0.85 (0.79 to 0.92) for 3.1-5 cups/d, and 0.88 (0.78 to 0.99) for > 5 cups/d (p for non-linearity = 0.32; p for trend < 0.001). Significant inverse associations were observed for caffeinated (p for trend < 0.001) and decaffeinated coffee (p for trend = 0.022). Significant inverse associations were observed between coffee consumption and deaths due to cardiovascular disease, neurological diseases, and suicide. No significant association between coffee consumption and total cancer mortality was found.

Conclusions—Higher consumption of total coffee, caffeinated coffee, and decaffeinated coffee was associated with lower risk of total mortality.

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reports the effect is clear only among those who drink coffee and “never smoked.” Among those, there was a 6% to 8% lower death rate connected to drinking up to 3 cups daily, and a 15% lower rate among those who drank 3 to 5 cups, and a 12% lower rate among those who drank over 5 cups daily. One possibility suggested is that coffee drinkers “drink less soda,” while it is also suggested that the lignans and chlorogenic acid in coffee “could reduce inflammation and help control blood sugar,” and so “reduce the risk of heart disease,” which was 10% lower among coffee drinkers. In addition, coffee drinkers had a 9% to 37% lower rate of death from “neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s and dementia.” They also had “between 20% and 36% lower rates of suicide.”