Study Says Coffee Protects Against Cirrhosis 261
An anonymous reader writes "Good news for those who like both coffee and alcohol. In a recent study of more than 125,000 people an Oakland, CA medical team found that consuming coffee seems to help protect against alcoholic cirrhosis. The study was done based on people enrolled in a private northern California health care plan between 1978 and 1985." From the article: "People drinking one cup of coffee per day were, on average, 20% less likely to develop alcoholic cirrhosis. For people drinking two or three cups the reduction was 40%, and for those drinking four or more cups of coffee a day the reduction in risk was 80%."
Fox coverage (Score:5, Informative)
This report proves coffee is good, and tea is bad
hmm.. perhaps Starbucks is involved somewhere..
Cirrhosis specifics (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/cirrhosis/DS00373 [mayoclinic.com] h osis [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholic_liver_cirr
Re:Study with 21 year old data? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Study with 21 year old data? (Score:3, Informative)
You do raise a good point, however: How do we know it's not something else that happened in that time? That's why you look at large numbers and correlations between those numbers. That's also why it's not absolute or definite. Coffee is linked to this, but it's not set it stone. More studies and experiments will need to be done to determine what, if anything, caused this condition.