HealthDay News — Drinking coffee may lower the risk for prostate cancer recurrence and disease progression, results from a population-based study suggest.
Men who drank four or more cups of coffee a day had a 59% reduced risk for prostate cancer recurrence or progression compared with those who drank just one cup a week or less, Janet L. Standford, PhD, MPH, BSN, of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle and colleagues reported in Cancer Causes & Control.
They analyzed data from 1,001 men aged 35 to 74 years, who were diagnosed with prostate cancer between 2002 and 2005, to determine prostate cancer recurrence or progression at five year follow up. A total of 630 participants who had answered questions about coffee and tea intake on a food frequency questionnaire two years prior to their prostate cancer diagnosis were included in the final analysis.
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A total of 61% participants reported consuming at least one cup of coffee a day, whereas 12% reported drinking four or more cups per day.
The adjusted hazard ratio for prostate cancer recurrence of progression was 0.41 among participants who drank for or more cups per day compared with those who drank one or fewer cups per week (95% CI: 0.20-0.81; P for trend=0.01).
There was no association between coffee consumption and reduced prostate-cancer specific mortality; however, the researchers noted the study did not include enough men who died from the disease to adequately assess this relationship.
Approximately 14 % of patients consumed one or more cups of tea per day, but tea consumption was not related to prostate cancer recurrence or progression.
“Results indicate that higher pre-diagnostic coffee consumption is associated with a lower risk of prostate cancer recurrence/progression,” the researchers wrote.
They added that the findings need to be replicated in larger clinical trials before coffee can be recommended for secondary prevention.
