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Title: Decaf, But Not Regular, Coffee May Help Protect Smokers Against Lung Cancer: Presented at AACR

"Decaf, But Not Regular, Coffee May Help Protect Smokers Against Lung Cancer: Presented at AACR"

By Charlene Laino ORLANDO, FL -- March 31, 2004 -- Among former and current smokers, coffee and tea are unlikely to be useful as chemopreventive agents, a case-control study suggests. But drinking decaffeinated coffee might help smokers to lower their risk of lung cancer, reported Julie A. Baker, MS, RN, an MD, PhD candidate at Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo, New York, United States. Ms. Baker presented the findings here on March 30th at the American Association for Cancer Research 95th Annual Meeting. To test that hypothesis that coffee and tea would decrease cancer risk among smokers because of their high phytochemical content, Ms. Baker and colleagues enrolled 993 current and former smokers with primary, incident lung cancer and 986 hospital controls with non-neoplastic conditions who were matched for age, sex and smoking history. Current smokers were defined as people who still smoked or quit within the past year, while former smokers were those who quit more than 1 year ago. Non-smokers were excluded from the analysis. Compared with people who never drink coffee, current or past smokers who drank 4 or more cups a day were 42% more likely to develop lung cancer (95% CI 1.06-1.91), the study showed. There was no significant association, positive or negative, between drinking 1 to 3 cups of coffee and cancer risk, Ms. Baker reported. Similarly, there was no significant association between consumption of black tea and lung cancer risk, she said. In contrast, drinking decaffeinated coffee was associated with a lowered lung cancer risk both for participants who drank 1 or fewer cups a day (OR 0.68, 95% CI 0.54-0.85) and those who consumed 2 or more cups a day (OR 0.64, 95% CI 0.51-0.81), Ms. Baker reported. "Since a protective effect on lung cancer risk was only evident for consumption of decaffeinated coffee, the results suggest that the high caffeine intake in regular coffee and tea outweighs the potentially beneficial phytochemicals," she said. [Study title: Associations Between Black Tea And Coffee Consumption And Risk Of Lung Cancer Among Current And Former Smokers. Abstract 3718]

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