Drinking 4 coffees a day linked to ‘41% lower risk of head and neck cancer’

YOUR morning brew could lower your risk of head and neck cancers, scientists say.

Sipping on three to four cups of coffee a day was linked to a 41 per cent lower risk of developing certain types of the disease.

Tea-drinking also seemed to have a favourable effect on cancer risk, according to an analysis performed by researchers at the University of Utah School of Medicine and Huntsman Cancer Institute.

Cancer can develop in more than 30 areas across the head and neck, including the mouth and lips, throat, voice box, nose, sinuses and salivary glands.

There are about 12,800 new head and neck cancer cases reported in the UK every year and around 4,100 related deaths, according to Cancer Research UK.

Though relatively uncommon in the UK, rates of head and neck cancer are rising in low and middle income countries across the world, becoming the seventh most common cancer worldwide.

The study’s senior author Dr Yuan-Chin Amy Lee said: “While there has been prior research on coffee and tea consumption and reduced risk of cancer, this study highlighted their varying effects with different sub-sites of head and neck cancer, including the observation that even decaffeinated coffee had some positive impact.

“Coffee and tea habits are fairly complex, and these findings support the need for more data and further studies around the impact that coffee and tea can have on reducing cancer risk.”

Researchers analysed 14 studies on coffee and tea consumption, which altogether yielded information on 9,548 patients with head and neck cancer and 15,783 people without the disease.

Study participants completed questionnaires about how many cups of caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee and tea they drank each day or week.

Compared with non-coffee-drinkers, people who drank more than four cups of caffeine-loaded coffee daily had a 17 per cent lower chance of getting head and neck cancer overall, the study published in the journal CANCER found.

They also had 30 per cent lower odds of having cancer of the oral cavity – also known as mouth cancer – and 22 per cent lower odds of having throat cancer.

Drinking three to four cups of the stuff was linked to a 41 per cent lower risk of having hypopharyngeal cancer – this a rare type of cancer that develops at the bottom of the throat.

Smoking, regularly drinking large amounts of booze and eating unhealthily are thought to up the risk of developing this type of cancer.

Meanwhile, drinking decaffeinated coffee was only associated with a reduced risk of one type of head and neck cancer.

Decaf drinkers were found to have a 25 per cent lower risk of developing cancer in their mouth or tongue.

As for tea, this seemed to lower the risk of hypopharyngeal cancer by 29 per cent.

The results also suggest drinking one cup a day or less was associated with 9 per cent lower odds of head and neck cancers overall, compared with not drinking the stuff at all.

The noted their study had limitations, including that self-reporting of tea and coffee drinking can be unreliable.

The specific type of tea or coffee was also not taken into account.

Prof Tom Sanders, professor emeritus of nutrition and dietetics at King’s College London who was not involved in the study said: “The overall conclusion is that the consumption of these beverages is associated with a slightly lower risk of [head and neck cancers].

“An important limitation is that this review is based on observational studies and not randomised controlled trials.

“So we cannot say from this study that drinking these beverages will lower risk of these cancers.

“In observational studies, it is very difficult to totally eliminate confounding effects, for example, of tobacco and alcohol from the statistical analyses.

“Consequently, people who drink a lot of coffee and tea may be more likely to avoid other harmful behaviours such as drinking alcohol and using tobacco and so may be at a lower risk of these cancers for other reasons.”