1. ¹Department of Social Medicine, Division of Health Administration and Promotion, Faculty of Medicine, Tottori University, Nishimachi 86, Yonago 683-8503, Japan
2. ²Department of Public Health, Kurume University School of Medicine, Kurume 830-0011, Japan
3. ³Fukuoka Institute of Health and Environmental Sciences, Dazaihu 818-0135, Japan
4. ⁴Department of Public Health, Niigata University School of Medicine, Niigata 951-8510, Japan
5. ⁵Chugoku Occupational Health Association, Fukuyama 721-0942, Japan
6. ⁶Department of Preventive Medicine/Biostatistics and Medical decision Making, Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine, Nagoya 466-8550, Japan

Correspondence: Dr Y Kurozawa, E-mail: kurozawa@grape.med.tottori-u.ac.jp

Received 8 February 2005; Revised 14 June 2005; Accepted 8 July 2005; Published online 9 August 2005.

Abstract

We examined the relation between coffee drinking and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) mortality in the Japan Collaborative Cohort Study for Evaluation of Cancer Risk (JACC Study). In total, 110 688 cohort members (46 399 male and 64 289 female subjects) aged 40–79 years were grouped by coffee intake into three categories: one or more cups per day, less than one cup per day and non-coffee drinkers. Cox proportional hazards model by SAS was used to obtain hazard ratio of HCC mortality for each coffee consumption categories. The hazard ratios were adjusted for age, gender, educational status, history of diabetes and liver diseases, smoking habits and alcohol. The hazard ratio of death due to HCC for drinkers of one and more cups of coffee per day, compared with non-coffee drinkers, was 0.50 (95% confidence interval 0.31–0.79), and the ratio for drinkers of less than one cup per day was 0.83 (95% confidence interval 0.54–1.25). Our data confirmed an inverse association between coffee consumption and HCC mortality.