UK Edition
Advanced prostate cancer sufferers are 16 per cent less likely to die if they are heavy coffee drinkers, a study in the British Medical Journal has found.
Every cup of coffee drank could reduce prostate cancer risk by as much as one per cent, according to researchers at the China Medical University.
Prostate cancer is now the most common type of cancer in the UK, with 49,029 cases diagnosed in England in 2018.
Researchers considered data from 16 relevant studies published up until September 2020.
They found that as well as improving outcomes in the later stages of the disease, prostate cancer was 12 per cent less likely to spread if patients were heavier coffee drinkers.
The strong anti-inflammatory properties of coffee mean it can improve the prognosis for cancer patients, according to lead author Dr Kefeng Wang.
This means it can play a positive role in the progression of the disease, she said, as well as improving blood sugar levels.
“Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer (worldwide), and the sixth leading cause of cancer death in men,” said Dr Wang.
“This study suggests that increased coffee consumption may be associated with a reduced risk of prostate cancer."
Dr Wang said further research was needed “to explore the underlying mechanisms and active compounds” in coffee and to confirm a causal link.
Professor Nick James, a prostate and bladder cancer research professor at the Institute of Cancer Research, said chemical processing may also be responsible for the correlation that the study discovered.
“This is something that has more credibility than most food association stories,” he said. “People will be more accurate in their levels of recall about the amount of coffee that they drink - it is a habit that people get into.”
“It does also seem to be a general pattern that drinking lots of coffee doesn’t appear to have many downsides.
“Generally Chinese men have lower risks of prostate cancer than men than Caucasians in Europe, which is thought to relate to diet but can also relate to susceptibility.”
There are also around 11,700 annual deaths from prostate cancer in the UK, which makes it the second most common cause of cancer deaths in men.
The disease accounts for around 14 per cent of all cancer deaths in British males, although mortality rates are thought to have decreased by a tenth during the last decade.
Dr Rachel Orritt, health information manager at Cancer Research UK, said that the charity is “very much looking at the evidence” around coffee consumption and different types of cancer.
“The difficulty with any research about anything we eat or drink is it is difficult to disentangle from all the other things we eat and drink,” she said.
“We welcome more research into the different potential causes and in this case preventative factors regarding cancer. What’s important is making sure the research is of a high enough quality.
“At the moment our advice is very much to encourage the things we know have a strong body of evidence behind them - so stopping smoking, keeping a healthy weight and having a balanced diet.
“Coffee consumption is one of those factors that is more difficult to investigate than others, so the picture isn’t yet clear.”
In 2016 the World Health Organisation (WHO) said coffee consumption had been found to reduce the risks of liver cancer and uterine cancer, while for more than 20 cancers, current evidence is “inconclusive”.
Twenty-five years previously, the WHO had classified coffee as a possible carcinogen, but has since clarified that the drink has no role in causing or worsening cancer.