Coffee, tea may protect against head & neck cancer: Study

New Delhi, Dec 23: Consumption of coffee and tea can lower the risks of developing head and neck cancer, including cancers of the mouth and throat, claimed a study on Monday.

Head and neck cancer is the seventh most common cancer worldwide, and rates are rising in low- and middle-income countries.

The findings, based on an analysis of data from 14 studies, showed that compared with non-coffee-drinkers, individuals who drank more than 4 cups of caffeinated coffee daily had 17 per cent lower odds of having head and neck cancer overall. It also led to a 30 per cent lower risk of having cancer of the oral cavity, and 22 per cent lower odds of having throat cancer.

Drinking 3-4 cups of caffeinated coffee was linked with a 41 per cent lower risk of having hypopharyngeal cancer -- a type of cancer at the bottom of the throat), revealed the study published in the peer-reviewed CANCER journal.

“While there has been prior research on coffee and tea consumption and reduced risk of 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,” said senior author Yuan-Chin Amy Lee, from Huntsman Cancer Institute and the University of Utah School of Medicine.

“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.”

The team examined data from 14 studies by different scientists and pooled information on 9,548 patients with head and neck cancer. They were then compared with 15,783 controls without cancer.

Study participants completed questionnaires about their prior consumption of caffeinated coffee, decaffeinated coffee, and tea in cups per day/week/month/year.

Notably, the researchers found that drinking decaffeinated coffee was associated with 25 per cent lower odds of oral cavity cancer.

Drinking tea was linked with 29 per cent lower odds of hypopharyngeal cancer. Also, drinking one cup or less of tea daily was linked with a 9 per cent lower risk of head and neck cancer overall and a 27 per cent lower risk of hypopharyngeal cancer, but drinking more than one cup was associated with 38 per cent higher odds of laryngeal cancer.