Chronic Liver Disease (CLD) is a cause of mortality and morbidity the world over, especially in low-income countries with limited treatment facilities and high disease burden. Until now, everyone knew that coffee was good for Liver Diseases but the effect of different types of coffee was not known. A new study from the UK sheds light on the effects of different types of coffee on Chronic Liver Disease.
The new study looked into decaffeinated, instant and ground coffee and its association with Liver diseases. BMC Public Health published the findings. This is the first study that looked into the effect of all types of coffee in liver diseases.
In the study, the researchers found that coffee drinkers had a 21 percent reduced risk of liver disease and a 49 percent lower risk of death from disease.
METHOD
The study was held in about 4,94,585 UK Biobank participants. The researchers used Cox regression to estimate Hazard Ratios (HR) of incident Chronic Liver Disease, incident Liver Disease, incident Hepatocellular Carcinoma (HCC) and even death from the disease.
RESULTS
In the follow up study of 10.7 years, they came across 3600 cases of CLD, 5439 cases of CLD or steatosis, 184 cases of HCC and 301 deaths from CLD among the 3,84,818 coffee drinkers and 1,09,767 non-coffee drinkers. When compared to non-coffee drinkers, coffee drinkers had lower adjusted HRs, CLD, and death. The findings were the same for all types of coffee.
Chronic Liver Disease is a major health problem across the world. In the report, the researchers say that global deaths due to Liver diseases increased from 8,99,000 (1.9 per cent of total) to 1.32 million (2.4 per cent of total) between 1990 and 2017. They also note that Low Income Countries had the highest prevalence of Chronic Liver Disease. Sub-Saharan Africa is the region that is most affected followed by Central and South America, Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia.
The most common aetiologies of CLD are alcohol-related liver disease (ALD), chronic hepatitis B and C infection, and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.
