Coffee, Tea Reduce Brain Cancer Risk

PROVIDENCE, R.I.Individuals who drink half a cup of drink coffee and tea daily may reduce their risk of glioma by 34 percent, according to a new study published in the November issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Researchers at Brown University analyzed data from 410,309 men and women in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) study, who reported coffee and tea consumption in food-frequency questionnaires and were followed over 8.5 years. The researchers used Cox proportional hazards models to examine the relation between coffee and tea and brain tumors.

During the study 343 cases of glioma and 245 cases of meningioma were newly diagnosed in nine countries. The researchers observed no associations between coffee, tea, or combined coffee and tea consumption and risk of either type of brain tumor when using quantiles based on country-specific distributions of intake. A significant inverse association was observed for glioma risk among those individuals consuming &#8805;100 mL coffee and tea per day compared with those consuming <100 mL/d (hazard ratio: 0.66; 95% CI: 0.44, 0.97; P = 0.03). The association was slightly stronger in men (hazard ratio: 0.59; 95% CI: 0.34, 1.01) than in women (hazard ratio: 0.74; 95% CI: 0.42, 1.31), although neither was statistically significant.