If the only thing getting you through a mountain of gift wrapping is a mug of tea or coffee, be in good spirits. Researchers have found that people who consume these drinks have a slightly lower risk of head and neck cancer.
According to Cancer Research UK, there are around 12,800 new cases of head and neck cancer and around 4,100 related deaths each year in the UK.
The new study doesn’t prove that tea and coffee on their own are protective against such cancers, but experts say the findings help shed light on a hotly debated area of inconsistent results.
“While there has been previous research examining coffee and tea consumption and reduced cancer risk, this study highlighted its varied effects on different sub-locations of head and neck cancer, including the observation that even decaffeinated coffee had a positive impact,” said Dr. Yuan. -Chin Amy Lee of the Huntsman Cancer Institute and the University of Utah School of Medicine, the study’s senior author.
Writing in Cancer magazinethe team reports how they analyzed data from 14 studies covering Europe, North America and Latin America.
Participants in the studies were asked to complete questionnaires to record their tea and coffee consumption patterns. Nine studies included data on participants’ consumption of decaffeinated coffee.
The researchers analyzed data from 9,548 people with head and neck cancer and 15,783 people without.
After taking into account factors such as age, gender, daily number of cigarettes smoked, alcohol consumption, and fruit and vegetable consumption, the researchers found that people who drink more than four cups of caffeinated coffee per day were 17% less likely to develop headaches. and neck cancer in general compared to those who don’t drink the drink. In particular, they found that such consumption was associated with a reduced risk of cancer of the oral cavity and oropharynx – the part of the throat just behind the mouth.
Drinking decaffeinated coffee was only associated with a reduced risk of oral cavity cancer.
The situation was less clear for tea. The results suggest that drinking one cup per day or less is associated with a 9% lower risk of head and neck cancer compared to abstinence, and in particular a reduced risk of lower throat cancer.
“Perhaps bioactive compounds other than caffeine contribute to the potential anticancer effect of coffee and tea,” says Lee.
But drinking more than one cup a day is associated with a 38% higher risk of laryngeal cancer, something the team believes may be related to tea drinking, which may increase the risk of gastroesophageal reflux disease, which is associated with a higher risk of laryngeal cancer.
The team notes that the study has limitations, including that self-reporting of tea and coffee drinking may be unreliable and that the type of tea or coffee was not taken into account.
Tom Sanders, emeritus professor of nutrition and dietetics at King’s College London, who was not involved in the work, also raised drawbacks.
“In observational studies it is very difficult to completely eliminate confounding effects, for example from tobacco and alcohol, from the statistical analysis,” he said.
“As a result, people who drink a lot of coffee and tea are more likely to avoid other harmful behaviors, such as drinking alcohol and using tobacco, and may be at lower risk for these cancers for other reasons.”