Women who drink a substantial amount of coffee each day may lower their risk for developing a particular type of breast cancer, Swedish researchers say. Their study linked consumption of five or more cups of coffee a day to a relatively marked reduction in the non-hormone-responsive disease known as ER-negative breast cancer. However, coffee consumption did not appear to lower the risk for developing ER-positive breast cancer.
Daily consumption of coffee may protect against the most aggressive type of breast cancer, ER-negative, said study co-author Dr. Per Hal, a professor in the medical epidemiology and biostatistics department at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. "Now, we don't have all the details," he cautioned. "We don't know, for example, what specific type of coffee we're talking about here. But what we do know is that the protective effect is quite striking and remains even after adjusting for a lot of other factors that have the potential to play a protective role."
The study, reported online May 11 in Breast Cancer Research, involved 5,929 Swedish women, aged 50 to 74. About half of the women had breast cancer. Women who drank five cups of coffee a day had a 33 percent to 57 percent lower risk for ER-negative cancer than did those who drank less than one cup a day.
"The next step is to find out what chemical factors in coffee cause the decreased rate of cancer and then attempt to see if these same chemicals can be used to treat a patient once they are already diagnosed with cancer," researchers said. (HealthDay News)