YOUR MORNING cup of coffee may deliver more than a little lift. Coffee also reduces the risk of a specific type of breast cancer, according to research from Sweden.
Women who drank five or more cups of coffee a day were found to have a 57 per cent reduced risk of developing a form of breast cancer known as “oestrogen receptor-negative” cancer.
The researchers from the Karolinska Institute also found that women had a “modest decrease in overall breast cancer risk” if they were coffee drinkers.
The study included post-menopausal women aged between 50 and 74, according to the study which was published in Breast Cancer Research, an online peer-reviewed journal published by BioMed Central. It included 2,818 women with confirmed cases of breast cancer and 3,111 controls. The researchers could establish no benefit from coffee-drinking in women with the "oestrogen receptor-positive form, but there was a clear benefit related to the receptor-negative form.
“Our main finding was that coffee consumption was associated with a strong reduction in breast cancer risk for the [oestrogen receptor-negative] tumour subtype. This effect was independent of HRT [hormone replacement therapy], smoking, highest education level attained, and average daily alcohol consumption,” the authors write.
Breast cancer affects about 2,800 women a year in Ireland, said Mairéad Lyons of the Irish Cancer Society. In 2008 there were 455 oestrogen receptor-negative cases, with 334 of them in the post-menopausal category studied by the researchers in Sweden.
Research helped our understanding of the disease but it was “too early to draw conclusions from this one study”, Ms Lyons said.
Many factors affected breast cancer risk including ageing, family history and HRT use, she said. Women who detect changes in their breasts or who have concerns should contact their GP, she added. Alternatively they could contact the Irish Cancer Society on freefone 1800 200 700.