After oil, coffee is the second most valuable commodity in the world.1 More than 50% of Americans drink coffee everyday,1 on average consuming 3.1 cups daily.2 In 1999, consumers in the US spent an estimated $17.9 billion in the retail and foodservice sectors on coffee products.3 Coffee’s aroma permeates everywhere; you can even study ‘Starbucks’ at Syracuse University.1 However, is our addiction to the humble coffee bean damaging our health?
A number of studies have suggested potential health risks associated with coffee consumption; however, the results are controversial. Whilst coffee has been reported to increase cardiovascular risk factors, such as blood pressure,4 cholesterol5 and plasma homocysteine,6 prospective studies have not reported increased cardiovascular risk 7, 8. Other research has demonstrated protective effects of coffee intake on diseases ranging from type 2 diabetes9 to Parkinson’s disease.10 A number of investigators have focused their attention on the relationship between the consumption of coffee and liver disease. In this review, we attempt to assess the impact of coffee consumption on a spectrum of liver abnormalities ranging from alteration of biochemical tests to its potential effect on the development of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).
We used PubMed (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez) to identify published studies and review articles, using the searching expressions ‘Coffee and liver disease’, ‘Coffee and hepatic disease’, ‘Coffee and cirrhosis’, ‘Coffee and liver cancer’ and ‘Coffee and hepatocellular carcinoma’. The search process was then repeated substituting the term ‘Coffee’ with ‘Caffeine’. Subsequently, the reference lists provided by the identified papers was hand-searched for any additional articles not identified by the PubMed search.