Excess Coffee Consumption a Culprit for Poor Health

martyb writes:

Excess coffee consumption a culprit for poor health

Cappuccino, latte or short black, coffee is one of the most commonly consumed drinks in the world. But whether it's good or bad for your health can be clarified by genetics, as a world-first study from the University of South Australia's Australian Centre for Precision Health shows that excess coffee consumption can cause poor health.

Using data from over 300,000 participants in the UK Biobank, researchers examined connections between genetically instrumented habitual coffee consumption and a full range of diseases, finding that too much coffee can increase the risk of osteoarthritis, arthropathy (joint disease) and obesity.

In earlier research conducted by Professor Hypponen and team, six cups of coffee a day were considered the upper limit of safe consumption.

Expert genetic epidemiologist, UniSA's Professor Elina Hypponen, says understanding any risks associated with habitual coffee intakes could have very large implications for population health.

[...] In this study, we used a genetic approach - called MR-PheWAS analysis - to establish the true effects of coffee consumption against 1117 clinical conditions.

Reassuringly, our results suggest that, moderate coffee drinking is mostly safe.

But it also showed that habitual coffee consumption increased the risks of three diseases: osteoarthritis, arthropathy and obesity, which can cause significant pain and suffering for individuals with these conditions."

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