Abstract P042: Association of Long-Term Coffee Consumption with Total and Cause-Specific Mortality

BACKGROUND: Coffee is one of the most popular beverages worldwide; however, the association between coffee consumption and risk of mortality remains inconclusive. METHOD: We examined the associations of consumption of total, caffeinated, and decaffeinated coffee with risk of subsequent total and cause-specific mortality among 121,704 women in the Nurses’ Health Study (1984 - 2013), 116,683 women in the Nurses’ Health Study 2 (1991 - 2013), and 51,530 men in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study (1986 - 2013). Participants with a history of cancer, heart disease, or stroke at baseline were excluded. Coffee consumption was assessed at baseline using a semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire. RESULTS: During 5,048,976 person-years of follow-up, 20,025 women and 13,391 men died. Consumption of total, caffeinated, and decaffeinated coffee were non-linearly associated with total mortality (P for non-linear trend < 0.001). The pooled hazard ratios (HRs) for death among participants who drank coffee, as compared with those who did not, were 0.96 (95% CI: 0.92 - 1.00) for coffee consumption less than one cup/d, 0.89 (95% CI: 0.86 - 0.92) for coffee consumption one to three cups/d, 0.91 (95% CI: 0.87 - 0.95) for coffee consumption three to five cups/d, and 1.01 (95% CI: 0.96 - 1.06) for coffee consumption more than five cups/d (p for non-linearity < 0.001; p for non-linear trend < 0.001). When restricting to never smokers, compared to non-drinkers, the multivariate adjusted HRs of total mortality across categories of total coffee consumption were 0.93 (0.86-1.02) for 1 cup/d, 0.87 (0.82-0.96) for 1-3 cups/d, 0.85 (0.77-0.94) for 3-5 cups/d, and 0.83 (0.71-0.97) for >5 cups/d (p for non-linearity = 0.15; p for linear trend <0.001). A significant inverse association was observed for both caffeinated coffee (p for trend < 0.001) and decaffeinated coffee (p for trend = 0.03). CONCLUSION: These data indicate higher consumption of total coffee, caffeinated coffee, and decaffeinated coffee was associated with lower risk of total mortality.