Based on the statistics, which show a significant increase in the number of new cases every year, specialists estimate that in 2035 around 24 million people will be affected by cancer.
Coffee consumption lowers the risk of intestinal cancer recurrence, archive photo
It is true that at the current moment of development and scientific research there are no certainties regarding the cause of the appearance of this disease, but specialists are trying to make connections between factors that could improve symptoms or lead to the discovery of new therapies.
The most recent study is part of this trend, in which scientists say that people with bowel cancer who drink between two and four cups of coffee a day significantly decrease the likelihood of the disease recurring, according to The Guardian.
A team of Dutch and British experts who carried out this study said the results were promising and speculated that if other studies show the same effect, patients diagnosed with bowel cancer annually could be encouraged to drink coffee. Statistics say that this type of cancer causes 16,500 deaths a year in the UK, which is 45 deaths a day.
The study followed the evolution of 1,719 bowel cancer patients in the Netherlands and found that those who drank at least two cups of coffee had a lower risk of the disease recurring. The effect was dose-dependent, the researchers say, because patients who consumed more coffee had an even lower risk of bowel cancer recurrence.
Patients who consumed at least five cups of coffee a day had a 32% lower risk of the disease returning than those who drank less than two cups, according to the study, which was funded by the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF ) and was published in the International Journal of Cancer.
The head of the research team, Dr. Ellen Kampman, professor of nutrition and disease at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, said that according to statistics, bowel cancer returns in one in five people diagnosed and can be fatal.
“It is intriguing that this study suggests that drinking three or four cups of coffee may reduce the recurrence of bowel cancer. (…) However, we are hopeful that this finding is real, as it appears to be dose-dependent; the more coffee is drunk, the greater the effect”, she said.
Prof. Marc Gunter, co-author of the study and holder of the chair of cancer epidemiology and prevention in the school of public health at Imperial College London, said, for his part, that the results are “very challenging because we don't really understand why coffee would have such an effect in bowel cancer patients.”
This bowel cancer study is the most recent, but there are already previous ones that talk about how coffee consumption reduces the risk of liver and uterine cancer. There is also some evidence that it has the same effect on mouth, pharynx, larynx and skin cancer.
