Coffee May Lower Liver Cancer Risk

By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter Thu Aug 2, 7:01 PM ET

THURSDAY, Aug. 2 (HealthDay News) -- People who drink coffee are 41 percent less likely to develop liver cancer compared with folks who don't indulge in the brew, Italian researchers report.

"Moreover, the apparent favorable effect of coffee drinking was found both in studies from southern Europe, where coffee is widely consumed, and from Japan, where coffee consumption is less frequent, and in subjects with chronic liver diseases," the researchers wrote in the August issue of Hepatology.

One expert said it's too early to laud coffee as an anti-cancer agent, however.

"I don't doubt that the association is true, but it is hard to know the cause," said Dr. Alfred I. Neugut, a professor of medicine and epidemiology at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and co-director of cancer prevention at New York Presbyterian Hospital in New York City. He was not involved in the study.

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