Drinking Coffee Reduces Liver Damage, Cuts Death Rate: Study

It is time for the coffee addicted people to rejoice as a new study finds it could reduce liver damage, and hence cut death risk. The researchers say intake of two or more cups of coffee a day reduces the risk of liver cirrhosis by 66 percent. It is especially helpful against cirrhosis that is caused by non-viral hepatitis.

Lead researcher of the study, Dr. Woon-Puay Koh, said the evidence suggests drinking coffee two or more cups a day may reduce the risk of liver damage in patients suffering with chronic liver disease, Newsonwellness stated. He conducted the study with Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore and National University of Singapore. He added further they did similar research on alcohol, green tea, black tea and soft drinks too to find the risk of mortality from cirrhosis. More than 63,000 Chinese people were recruited as the subjects of the study between the age group of 45 and 74 who lives in Singapore.

The study is named as The Singapore Chinese Health Study and is a prospective population-based finding. All the subjects provided information on their lifestyle choices, their diets and also medical history during the in-person interviews between 1993 and 1998, and they were followed for about 15 years. It was found 14,928 people died during the study and 114 of the deaths occurred from liver cirrhosis.

Researchers found those subjects who consumed at least 20 g of ethanol every day had higher risk of cirrhosis mortality, but those who drank coffee was found with lower risk of deaths from the disease. The study is published in the Hepatology journal.