Coffee reduces type of breast cancer risk

STOCKHOLM, Sweden, May 11 (UPI) -- Drinking coffee specifically reduces the risk of anti-estrogen-resistant estrogen-receptor-negative breast cancer, researchers in Sweden say.

Researchers Jingmei Li, Petra Seibold, Jenny Chang-Claude, Dieter Flesch-Janys, Jianjun Liu, Kamila Czene, Keith Humphreys and Per Hall of the Karolinska Institutet compared lifestyle factors and coffee consumption in women with breast cancer and an age-matched control group.

The study, published in the journal Breast Cancer Research, found coffee drinkers had a lower incidence of breast cancer than women who rarely drank coffee.

However, they also found that several lifestyle factors -- such as age at menopause, exercise, weight, education and a family history of breast cancer -- affected breast cancer rates, and once these factors were accounted for, the protective effect of coffee on breast cancer was only measurable for ER-negative breast cancer.

"There is often conflicting information about the beneficial effects of coffee -- when we compared our results to that of a German study we discovered that their data showed the same trend, but the relationship was much weaker," the researchers said in a statement. "We suggest that this may have something to do with the way the coffee was prepared, or the type of bean preferred. It is unlikely that the protective effect is due to phytoestrogens present in coffee since there was no reduction in the incidence of ER-positive cancer in this study."