In their continuing quest to prove that coffee is a healthful food, medical researchers analyzed the health records of nearly 180,000 Americans and determined that the ones with a daily java habit were less likely to get a common type of liver cancer than their less-caffeinated friends.
The study was presented last week at the American Association for Cancer Research’s annual meeting in San Diego.
Compared with people who drank no more than six cups of coffee per week, those who drank one to three cups per day were 29 percent less likely to develop hepatocellular carcinoma, or HCC, which is the most-common form of liver cancer.
Serious coffee drinkers — those who downed four or more cups a day —were 42 percent less likely to be diagnosed with the disease.
“Now we can add HCC to the list of medical ailments, such as Parkinson’s disease, type 2 diabetes and stroke, that may be prevented by coffee intake,” study leader V. Wendy Setiawan said in a statement. She is an assistant professor of preventive medicine at the University of Southern California’s Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center.