How does coffee affect liver health? An analysis of 450,000 people reveals...

A study found that coffee consumption had a positive effect on overall survival but not on liver disease-related mortality.

 

For Koreans, coffee is more than just a luxury. Annual per capita coffee consumption in Korea (as of 2023) is 405 cups, more than double the global per capita consumption (152 cups). With many people turning to coffee both during busy times and during leisure, interest in the health benefits of coffee is also growing. Drinking one to two cups of coffee a day can help prevent chronic diseases like diabetes and high blood pressure. Research also shows it reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease and colon cancer.

Professor Ryu Dam's team from the Department of Gastroenterology at Soonchunhyang University Seoul Hospital used data from the UK Biobank to evaluate the effects of coffee consumption on metabolic fatty liver disease and metabolic alcoholic fatty liver disease. The research team divided 455,870 participants into three groups: no fatty liver disease, metabolic fatty liver disease, and metabolic alcoholic fatty liver disease. They then categorized these individuals into 0, 1-2, and 3 or more cups of coffee per day, conducting a large-scale cohort analysis.

 

While previous studies have shown that coffee can inhibit the progression of liver disease, this study applied inverse probability weighting (IPTW) to analyze the impact of coffee consumption on liver disease-related survival. IPTW assigns greater weight to events with a lower probability of occurrence, a method primarily used to infer causality.

 

The analysis results showed that before applying inverse probability weighting, consuming 1 to 2 cups of coffee per day increased the liver disease-related survival rate in all groups: those without fatty liver disease, those with metabolic fatty liver disease, and those with metabolic alcoholic fatty liver disease.

However, after applying inverse probability weighting, coffee consumption was found to have no effect on liver disease-related mortality in either the metabolic fatty liver disease or metabolic alcoholic fatty liver disease groups.

 

Professor Ryu Dam “Coffee consumption had a positive effect on overall survival, but had no significant effect on liver disease-related mortality. He said, “We confirmed it,” and “This is a more accurate analysis result that corrected for variables by additionally using a tool called confounding variable correction in existing studies.”

 

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I like coffee,

1.2 cups a day for diabetes or high blood pressure

It helps with prevention,

It's not a sure cure.