Lower Liver Cancer Risk Associated With Higher Coffee Consumption
27 Jun 2008

A new 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 the July issue of Hepatology, a journal
published by John Wiley & Sons on behalf of the American Association for the
Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD). The article and an accompanying editorial
are also available online at Wiley Interscience
(http://www.interscience.wiley.com/).

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 new
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."

----------------------------
Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release.
----------------------------

Article: "Joint effects of coffee consumption and serum
gamma-glutamyltransferase on the risk of liver cancer." Hu, Gang;
Tuomilehto, Jaakko; Pukkala, Eero; Hakulinen, Timo; Antikainen, Riitta;
Vartiainen, Erkki; Jousilahti, Pekka. Hepatology; July 2008;
10.1002/hep.22320; Published online 3/18/08.

Editorial: "Cancer and liver cancer prevention: is it a fact or just a
potential?" La Vecchia, Carlo. Hepatology; July 2008; 10.1002/hep.22309;
Published online 6/20/08.

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Source: Sean Wagner
Wiley-Blackwell
Article URL: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/113004.php

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