Coffee Benefits Patients with Liver Disease

By Annette Boyle and Brenda Mooney, MDalert.com contributors.

Save to PDF November 17, 2015 By <em>By Annette Boyle and Brenda Mooney, MDalert.com contributors.</em>

San Francisco—An Australian team collected the self-reported coffee, tea and, alcohol drinking habits of 1155 patients with hepatitis C or B infections, and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). These patients were also receiving transient elastography assessments of liver stiffness during the time from May 2012 to November 2013.

Daily coffee consumption reported by 1125 individuals ranged from 0-20 cups, with a daily average of 1.3 cups; nearly 73% drank instant coffee. The results were reported by A Hodge and colleagues in poster 47 at the 2015 annual meeting of the AASLD, held here recently. You can find the entire abstract here.

The average liver stiffness for all the individuals studied was 8.4 on the Korean Society of Pathologists Scoring System (kPa). Multiple linear regression that took controlled for age, alcohol consumption, smoking, and weight. Individuals with HCV benefited from coffee consumption, with liver stiffness an average of 2 kPa lower for those that drank at least 2 cups of coffee a day compared to non-coffee drinkers.

In patients with NAFLD, consumption of ≥2 cups of coffee per day was associated with a decrease in liver stiffness (controlled attenuation parameter, CAP) of about 9% (23 dB/m) compared with non-coffee drinkers.

Of the 1155 individuals in the study, 37.5% had HCV, 14.4% had NAFLD, and 45.5% had HBV. A small number (2.3%) had HCV with sustained viral response; 0.3% had HCV/HBV coinfections. The majority of patients were male (57.9%) and the average age 48.2 years.

AASLD The Liver Meeting® 2015 Conference Research Round-Up