Coffee reduces prostate cancer risk

The more coffee you drink, the lower your chances of developing prostate cancer, at least according to a new study.

The only trouble is that you might have to drink an awful lot of coffee before you see a significant reduction in your risk.

Each cup of coffee you drink reduces your risk by 1 percent, researchers from Shengjing Hospital in China discovered when they took another look at 16 studies that had included nearly 58,000 prostate cancer patients who were compared with more than 1 million healthy people to see what was making the difference.

The healthy participants were, on average, drinking far more coffee a day than the cancer patients, and the protective effects were cumulative. In other words, drinking five cups a day might have a bigger effect that just the expected 5 percent, and it works against all types of prostate cancer, including the lethal variety.

Biologically, there’s every reason to think that coffee could be having this protective effect. It improves glucose metabolism, lowers levels of plasma insulin, and is anti-inflammatory and is an antioxidant, and can affect the sex hormones.

The caffeine in the coffee could be doing all the good work; studies that looked at decaffeinated drinks didn’t find they delivered the same protection against the cancer.

(Source: BMJ Open, 2021; 11: e038902)

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