Breast Cancer Risk Reduced by Consuming Caffeinated Coffee

January 5th 2006

Benefits of Coffee

Caffeinated Coffee may reduce the risk of breast cancer in women, according to a new Canadian study. The researchers examined women with a particular type of cancer associated with a specific gene mutation. The research is especially important for women with a family history of breast cancer.

Looking at women with the BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene mutations the researchers found that women that drank more coffee had less of a risk of developing breast cancer. According to the CTV Canadian website, Professor Steven A. Narod at the University of Toronto said “"Those women who drank six or more cups of coffee a day on average had about a 75 per cent reduction in the risk of breast cancer." The women who drank 4 to 5 cups of coffee per day were able to reduce their risk 25% according to Reuters. Reuters also claims the risk reduction for 6 or more cups per day was 69%.

Even three cups of coffee a day lowered the risk 10 percent. The patients with the BRCA1 gene mutation benefited from coffee consumption while the patients with BRCA2 gene mutation had negligible benefits. This is according to the research published in the January edition of the International Journal of Cancer.

The published study said "These results suggest that among women with BRCA gene mutation, coffee consumption is unlikely to be harmful and that high levels of consumption may in fact be related to reduced breast cancer risk."

The study included 1,690 women participants from four countries. The women were questioned about their lifetime coffee consumption through questionnaires. They found that decaffeinated coffee consumption had no effect on breast cancer rates. The reduced cancer risk may be due to phtoestrogens found in the coffee.

Narod also said "If we can understand how it is that coffee exactly went about preventing breast cancer that may give us a clue to other preventative treatments we can do without the side effects of drinking that much coffee."

"The mechanism by which phytoestrogens may beneficially influence the risk of breast cancer has predominantly been attributed to their structural similarity to endogenous estrogens and their ability to bind to estrogen receptors," Narod said as reported by Reuters.