Coffee, tea may reduce risk for head, neck cancers
Key takeaways:
- Drinking more than four cups of coffee per day is associated with a reduced risk for head and neck cancers.
- Drinking tea is associated with lower risk for hypopharyngeal cancer.
Frequent daily coffee and tea drinkers are at lower risk for a variety of head and neck cancers, as well as mouth and throat-related cancers, according to data published in Cancer.
Data from a combined 14 studies showed that individuals who drank more than four cups of caffeinated coffee per day had 17% lower odds of any head and neck cancer.
“While there has been prior research on coffee and tea consumption and reduced risk [for] 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,” Yuan-Chin Amy Lee, PhD, of Huntsman Cancer Institute and University of Utah School of Medicine, said in a press release. “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.”
Lee and colleagues said the potential relationship between coffee or tea consumption and head and neck cancer (HNC) incidence is unclear. With HNC cases growing globally, they conducted a pooled analysis of 14 individual-level case-control studies to evaluate the potential relationship.
The study included 9,548 patients with HNC and 15,783 control patients from the International Head and Neck Cancer Epidemiology consortium.
Individuals who drank more than four cups of caffeinated coffee per day appeared less likely to have HNC (OR = 0.83; 95% CI, 0.69-1), oral cavity (OR = 0.7; 95% CI, 0.55-0.89) and oropharyngeal cancers (OR = 0.78; 95% CI, 0.61-0.99) than non-coffee drinkers.
Those who drank three to four cups of caffeinated coffee per day had a 41% reduced chance for hypopharyngeal cancer (OR = 0.59; 95% CI, 0.39-0.91).
Drinking decaffeinated coffee (OR = 0.75; 95% CI, 0.64-0.87) and drinking at least part of one cup daily lowered the risk for oral cavity cancer (OR = 0.66; 95% CI, 0.54-0.81).
Tea drinkers had a 29% reduced likelihood for hypopharyngeal cancer (OR = 0.71; 95% CI, 0.59-0.87), and daily tea consumption of less than one cup resulted in a lower risk for HNC (OR = 0.91; 95% CI, 0.84-0.98) and hypopharyngeal cancer (OR = 0.73; 95% CI, 0.59-0.91).
However, drinking more than one cup daily increased risk for laryngeal cancer (OR = 1.38; 95% CI, 1.09-1.74).
Researchers acknowledged study limitations, including the potential for recall bias and the misclassification of coffee and tea consumption due to the study’s case-control nature, the study’s poor generalizability to countries other than North America or Europe due to other coffee/tea drinking habits, and the inability to examine differences between caffeinated tea and herbal/decaffeinated tea.
“Further studies should assess the effects of coffee and tea consumption in regions beyond North America and Europe, especially in low‐ and middle-income countries burdened by HNC, as well as including different coffee and tea types and processing styles, which may further help contribute to an understanding of the mechanisms for the association between coffee and tea consumption and HNC risk,” Nguyen and colleagues wrote.
References:
- Can drinking coffee or tea help prevent head and neck cancer? (press release). Available at: https://www.news-medical.net/news/20241223/Coffee-and-tea-consumption-linked-with-lower-risk-of-head-and-neck-cancer.aspx#:~:text=Drinking%203%E2%80%934%20cups%20of,lower%20odds%20of%20hypopharyngeal%20cancer. Published Dec. 23, 2024. Accessed Dec. 23, 2024.
- Nguyen T, et al. Cancer. 2024;doi:10.1002/cncr.35620.
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Nguyen T, et al. Cancer. 2024;doi:10.1002/cncr.35620.