Categories: Scrubs

Coffee may reduce chance of death from liver cirrhosis

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Do nurses need another reason to drink coffee every morning? Probably not, but here’s a pretty good one anyway:

A new study suggests that drinking two cups of coffee a day may reduce the risk of certain types of liver cirrhosis, according to ScienceDaily.com.

The study looked at more than 63,000 Chinese people living in Singapore beginning in 1993 for an average of 15 years. The study, published in the journal Hepatology, finds that drinking two or more cups of coffee a day was associated with a 66 percent lower risk of death from liver cirrhosis caused by non-viral hepatitis.

Before you fire up the Mr. Coffee during your next break, though, it should be noted that while the study produces a connection between coffee and a reduced mortality rate from the certain type of liver disease, it does not produce a clear cause-and-effect relationship between the two. The study also found that tea, fruit juice and soft drinks did not affect cirrhosis mortality risk.

Coffee consumption was not shown to affect the viral hepatitis B cirrhosis mortality rate.

“Our study is the first to demonstrate a difference between the effects of coffee on non-viral and viral hepatitis related cirrhosis mortality,” concludes Dr. Koh. “This finding resolves the seemingly conflicting results on the effect of coffee in Western and Asian-based studies of death from liver cirrhosis.”

Do you drink coffee? If not, what’s your go-to drink that gives you energy during a long shift?

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