Health News

June 13, 2006

A new study suggests drinking coffee may help protect the liver against alcoholic cirrhosis. Although coffee may help protect the liver against this disease, coffee is not a way to prevent liver cirrhosis and other diseases.

Those who drank as little as one cup of coffee daily were 20 percent less likely to have alcoholic cirrhosis compared to those who did not drink coffee. The risk of the liver disease decreased as coffee drinking increased, according to the study funded by a grant from the Kaiser Foundation Research Institute.

Tea was not associated with a reduced risk, indicating caffeine may not be the link, the study in Archives of Internal Medicine concluded.

The study, led by researchers at Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, California followed more than 125,000 people between 1978 and 1985. In the study was published in the June 12 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.