Drinking coffee can lower your risk of prostate cancer.
The researchers combined data from 16 prospective studies that calculated the risk associated with higher versus lower coffee consumption. In all, there were 1,081,586 participants and 57,732 cases of prostate cancer in studies conducted in the United States, Europe and Japan. The review appears at the BMJ Open.
Compared to people who drank less coffee, those who drank more had a 9% lower risk of prostate cancer. The risk of advanced cancer was 12% lower and the risk of fatal disease 16% lower. The researchers calculated that there was an almost 1% reduction in risk for each additional daily cup of coffee.
Fourteen of the studies were considered to be of high quality, with little risk of bias, and the large sample size gives the review considerable strength. Most studies controlled the family history of prostate cancer, race, smoking, alcohol consumption, BMI and physical activity, although there may be other variables that the researchers were unable to explain.
Data on coffee consumption depend on self-reports, which may not be reliable. In addition, all studies were observational, so they show only an association between coffee consumption and the risk of prostate cancer, not cause and effect.
Still, the authors, led by Kefeng Wang, of China Medical University in Shenyang, China, write that “men can be encouraged to increase their coffee consumption to potentially lower their risk of prostate cancer.”