Doctors doubt own coffee-cancer finding

Press, 29 August 1986, Page 6

Doctors doubt own coffee-cancer finding

NZPA-AP Boston A Harvard team that discovered an apparent link between coffee and cancer of the pancreas has published new research that disputes its own earlier finding. “Standing alone, it’s very difficult to know what conclusions to draw from this,” said Dr Brian

MacMahon, of the Harvard School of Public Health. Five years ago, Dr MaeMahon’s team published a study concluding that people who drank a cup or two of coffee a day . were nearly twice as likely as non-drinkers to get pancreatic cancer. They said then that coffee drinking could cause

more than half of the cases of that form of cancer in the United States. Methods used to reach that conclusion were criticised by some, and later follow-ups by other groups did not find a strong association between coffee and cancer. The team’s latest

study, published as a letter in "The New England Journal of Medicine,” found no increased cancer risk for people who drank fewer than five cups a day. For those who drank more than that, the results were less clear. Men who drank five or more cups a day had

nearly 2% time® the sual risk of p*B«a«e cancer, hot there wa® no statistically significant increase In risk among women. Dr MaeMafcw aaM that the latest research had turned up bo evidence of a gradual increase in risk as drinking rose. Such a trend

be expected « caftee trely etiwd cancer. Assffeer reee&t study •n the was coattoeted by Dr Ellen Gold, ot Jritaw Hopfcfw University. .»e fawtf ,« i n . creased rink among mate coffee driakers. and in wafsee the increase in risk was not statistically meantogfaL