Coffee consumption and incidence of colorectal cancer.

Title
Coffee consumption and incidence of colorectal cancer in two prospective cohort studies of Swedish women and men.

Source
American Journal of Epidemiology. 163(7):638-44, 2006 Apr 1.

Investigators have reported an inverse association between coffee consumption and risk of colorectal cancer in several case-control studies, but prospective studies, most of them involving small numbers of cases, have not supported such a relation. In this analysis, the authors prospectively examined the association of coffee consumption with colorectal cancer risk among participants from two population-based cohort studies: 61,433 women in the Swedish Mammography Cohort and 45,306 men in the Cohort of Swedish Men. Information about coffee consumption was obtained from food frequency questionnaires in 1987-1990 and 1997 for women and in 1997 for men.

Coffee consumption was not associated with risk of colorectal cancer, colon cancer, or rectal cancer in either women or men. For both cohorts combined, the multivariate rate ratio for colorectal cancer for each additional cup of coffee per day was 1.00. The associations were not modified by colorectal cancer risk factors. The findings from these two large prospective cohort studies do not support the hypothesis that coffee consumption lowers the risk of colorectal cancer.