Here’s the latest good news about coffee: Take enough of it and it might keep prostate cancer from getting worse or coming back.
We're used to hearing health claims for coffee by now -- that it's good for stroke, neck pain, diabetes, and a thousand other things.
In the latest edition of the journal Cancer Causes & Control, researchers from Maastricht University in The Netherlands, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle and the University of Washington report on a study of men diagnosed with prostate cancer between 2002 and 2005 in King County, Washington.
The researchers checked their subjects’ coffee and tea consumption two years before diagnosis date, and the progress of their cancers, and found that “coffee consumption was associated with a reduced risk of prostate cancer recurrence/progression.” The men who drank four cups a day or more appeared to reduce their risk by 59% over those who drank one cup or less.
Harvard had conducted a similar study a few years earlier, but the Maastricht/Seattle team was especially confident of its “composite definition of prostate cancer recurrence/progression” based on the highly detailed information it was able to get on its subjects, including PSA levels, secondary treatment reports, data from scans and biopsies.”
Also of interest to doctors and the people who work with them: Part B News, DecisionHealth's weekly physician practice publication.