A new study is giving people one more reason to drink coffee.
According to new data comparing people's coffee consumption levels, researchers found that people who drank significantly more cups of coffee were less likely to develop multiple sclerosis (MS), a nervous system disorder that damages the protective material that covers nerve cells called the myelin sheath.
The team, headed by Anna Hedström, a doctoral student in environmental medicine at Sweden's Karolinska Institute, conducted a meta-analysis study using data gathered from two large case-controlled studies from Sweden and the United States. The data included 2,779 people diagnosed with MS and 3,960 people without the disorder.
After comparing levels of coffee consumption, researchers reported that people who drank more than four cups per day had a 29 percent reduced risk of developing MS in comparison to people who did not drink coffee at all. The researchers did not find out whether or not coffee consumption helped with or delayed the symptoms of MS during a relapse in people diagnosed with the condition.
The researchers pointed out one specific limitation in their study, which was that coffee consumption levels were all self-reported. The participants were asked to recall how many cups of coffee they had a decade ago.
The researchers were not able to identify how coffee affects MS, but they reasoned that the caffeine from the coffee might have some protective benefits for the brain and the spinal cord. In a previous study conducted in 2008, researchers headed by Margaret Bynoe at New York's Cornell University found an association between MS in mice and caffeine. The team found that when they fed high levels of caffeine to mice that were bred to develop a disease similar to MS in humans, symptoms of MS never manifested.
However, since this study did not find a cause-and-effect relationship, the team is advising people, especially those who believe they are at risk of MS, against increasing their coffee consumption as a preventive measure.
"Although it remains to be shown whether drinking coffee can prevent the development of MS, the results of these thorough analyses add to the growing evidence for the beneficial health effects of coffee," Elaine Kingwell and José Maria Andreas Wijnands, of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia in Canada, wrote. "The intriguing findings indicate that the role of coffee in the development of MS clearly warrants further investigation, as do the mechanisms that underlie the relationship. In turn, this could potentially contribute to a better understanding of MS aetiology and the development of novel MS therapies."
The study's findings were presented at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology before they were published in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry.
