Moderate coffee consumption which equals to three to four cups of coffee per day may help to prevent risk of type 2 diabetes, according to researchers.

The finding was highlighted in a session report published by the Institute for Scientific Information on Coffee (ISIC), a not-for-profit organisation devoted to the study and disclosure of science related to coffee and health.


Recent scientific evidence has consistently linked regular, moderate coffee consumption with a possible reduced risk of developing type 2 diabetes. An update of this research and key findings presented during a session at the 2012 World Congress on Prevention of Diabetes and Its Complications (WCPD) is summarised in the report.

The report outlines the epidemiological evidence linking coffee consumption to diabetes prevention, highlighting research that shows three to four cups of coffee per day is associated with an approximate 25 per cent lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes, compared to consuming none or less than two cups per day1. Another study also found an inverse dose dependent response effect with each additional cup of coffee reducing the relative risk by 7-8 per cent.

Whilst these epidemiological studies suggest an association between moderate coffee consumption and reduced risk of developing diabetes, they are unable to infer a causal effect. As such, clinical intervention trails are required to study the effect in a controlled setting. One prospective randomized controlled trial, tested glucose and insulin after an oral glucose tolerance test with 12g decaffeinated coffee, 1g chlorogenic acid, 500 mg trigonelline, or placebo. This study demonstrated that chlorogenic acid, and trigonelline reduced early glucose and insulin responses, and contribute to the putative beneficial effect of coffee.

The report noted that the association between coffee consumption a reduced risk of type 2 diabetes could be seen as counter intuitive, as drinking coffee is often linked to unhealthier habits, such as smoking and low levels of physical activity.

Furthermore, studies have illustrated that moderate coffee consumption is not associated with an increased risk of hypertension, stroke or coronary heart disease. Research with patients with CVD has also shown that moderate coffee consumption is inversely associated with risk of heart failure, with a J-shaped relationship.

Finally, the report puts forward some of the key mechanistic theories that underlie the possible relationship between coffee consumption and the reduced risk of diabetes.

These included the ``Energy Expenditure Hypothesis``, which suggests that the caffeine in coffee stimulates metabolism and increases energy expenditure and the ``Carbohydrate Metabolic Hypothesis``, whereby it is thought that coffee components play a key role by influencing the glucose balance within the body. There is also a subset of theories that suggest coffee contains components that may improve insulin sensitivity though mechanisms such as modulating inflammatory pathways, mediating the oxidative stress of cells, hormonal effects or by reducing iron stores.

Dr. Pilar Riobo Servan, Associate Chief of Endocrinology and Nutrition, Jimenez Diaz-Capio Hospital of Madrid and a speaker at the WCPD session concluded the report, commenting: "A dose-dependent inverse association between coffee drinking and total mortality has been demonstrated in general population and it persists among diabetics. Although more research on the effect of coffee in health is yet needed, current information suggests that coffee is not as bad as previously considered!"

Scientists have conducted early tests on a new once-a-day Alzheimer`s pill with "encouraging" results, and they claim the drug could stop the disease in its tracks.

A small number of British sufferers with mild-to-moderate stage Alzheimer`s could get access to the drug, known as MK-8931, when the trial starts in the new year, The Telegraph reported.


Early tests indicate the drug could be remarkably effective at halting the biochemical process, known as the `amyloid cascade`, that causes the devastating brain disease.

Alzheimer`s results from a mass die-off of brain cells, linked to the build-up of structures between cells called amyloid plaques.

Researchers are increasingly convinced that the best way to attack Alzheimer`s is to stop the underlying disease before the plaques form in large numbers.

As a result they have started to look at agents which tackle the key ingredient of the plaques, a protein called beta amyloid.

In a pilot study of 200 healthy volunteers, drugs firm MSD showed that its agent MK-8931 reduced levels of beta amyloid in spinal fluid by 92 percent.

Now it is rolling out the study to 1,700 people with mild-to-moderate Alzheimer`s worldwide. Half will be randomly assigned the drug and half a placebo. Some of the study participants will be in Britain, although numbers have yet to be finalised.

"The idea of this drug is to stop the production of abnormal levels of beta amyloid in the brain. It`s about getting in early, so that if less amyloid is produced less plaques will come together," Dr Richard Perry, a consultant neurologist at lecturer at Imperial College Healthcare National Health Service Trust, said.

"From what I have seen of the phase one trial results, this drug looks encouraging in terms of reducing the level of abnormal beta-amyloid in spinal fluid," Perry said.

The research scientists will measure rates of cognitive decline in those on the pill against those on the dummy, using mental ability tests and assessing how well they carry out normal day-to-day functions, the paper said.

They are not expecting it to improve the abilities of sufferers: most experts think that there is no way of reversing the damage Alzheimer`s has already inflicted.

Since they are looking at relatively early-stage Alzheimer`s, the differences will take some time to accrue and the researchers said results will not be ready until 2016.

The study was presented to the American Academy of Neurology.

Going to bed an hour earlier than usual could help to ward off high blood pressure, according to a new study.

Researchers found people who were showing the early signs of high blood pressure were able to restore readings to healthy levels in just six weeks if they had an extra hour in bed every night.

The study, carried out at Harvard Medical School in Boston, USA, looked at men and women who regularly slept for only seven hours or less a night and were beginning to have borderline high blood pressure readings.

High blood pressure, or hypertension, affects one in five adults in the UK and is thought to be responsible for half of all heart attacks and strokes.

But despite an array of different drugs available on the NHS, it's estimated more than half of all patients have 'poorly controlled' blood pressure, which means they still have readings in the danger zone above 140mmHg/90mmHg, a measure of the amount of force inside arteries when the heart is forcing blood through them and the force when it relaxes.

Lack of sleep and a stressful lifestyle have long been associated with an increased risk of the condition.

But the latest study is one of the first to prove that blood pressure can be brought under control by simply increasing sleep duration.

Researchers recruited 22 middle aged men and women who either had prehypertension, where their readings were not excessively high but had been increasing and were on target to reach dangerous levels.

The volunteers all claimed to sleep seven hours or less a night.

Over a six week period, 13 of the group were told to extend their sleeping patterns by getting to bed an hour earlier than they normally would.

The rest were told to stick to their normal sleeping routines.

They all wore monitors to check their blood pressure round-the-clock and underwent blood and urine checks too.

The results, published in the Journal of Sleep Research, showed the extended sleep group managed to get at least 35 minutes extra in bed.

As a result, their average blood pressure readings dropped sharply by between eight and 14mmHg.

It's thought too little sleep affects the body's ability to deal with stress hormones that can drive up blood pressure.

In a report on their findings the researchers said extra sleep could soon be prescribed as a remedy for high blood pressure.

'These preliminary findings have to be interpreted with caution. But future investigations should look at whether increasing sleep duration serves as an effective strategy in the treatment of hypertension.'

Common foods from burnt toast to low-fat salad dressing have been linked to increased cancer risk.

But US scientists have now warned that many reports connecting familiar ingredients with increased cancer risk have little statistical significance and should be treated with caution.

"When we examined the reports, we found many had borderline or no statistical significance," the Guardian quoted Dr Jonathan Schoenfeld of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, as saying.

Writing in a paper in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Schoenfeld and his co-author, John Ioannidis of Stanford University, said that trials have repeatedly failed to find effects for observational studies, which had initially linked various foods to cancer.

Recent reports have linked colouring in fizzy drinks, low-fat salad dressing, burnt toast and tea to elevated cancer risk. In the past, red meat, hot dogs, doughnuts and bacon have also been highlighted.

To examine the implications of these reports, Schoenfeld and Ioannidis selected ingredients at random from the Boston Cooking-School Cook Book.

"We used random numbers to select recipes and collected the ingredients from these" said Schoenfeld.

"This gave us a good range of common and a few not so common foods.

Then we put each of those ingredients into a search engine to find out their associations with cancer risks in medical literature. We found that 40 out of the 50 ingredients we had selected had been studied as having possible links with cancer. The 10 that had not been studied were less common ingredients," he added.

Among the 40 foods that had been linked to cancer risks were flour, coffee, butter, olives, sugar, bread and salt, as well as peas, duck, tomatoes, lemon, onion, celery, carrot, parsley and lamb, together with more unusual ingredients, including lobster, tripe, veal, mace, cinnamon and mustard.

Schoenfeld and Ioannidis then analysed the scientific papers produced after initial investigations into these foods. They also looked at how many times an ingredient was supposed to increase cancer risk and the statistical significance of the studies.

Their work suggested that many reports linking foodstuffs to cancer revealed no valid medical pattern at all.

"We found that, if we took one individual study that finds a link with cancer, it was very often difficult to repeat that in other studies. People need to know whether a study linking a food to cancer risk is backed up before jumping to conclusions," said Schoenfeld.

Aspirin may help reduce risks of developing liver cancer or dying from liver disease, regardless of how often it's taken, a new study has revealed.

The new study looked at more than 300,000 men and women between 50 and 71 years old who were enrolled in an AARP diet and health study. Participants on average were tracked for 10 to 12 years, and reported their use of both aspirin and non-aspirin nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) throughout the study period.

The researchers found people taking aspirin were 41 percent less likely to develop liver cancer, also called hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), and were 45 percent less likely to die from chronic liver disease (CLD). People who took non-aspirin NSAIDs were 26 percent less likely to die from liver disease, but had no significant protection against liver cancer.

"Aspirin, in particular, when used exclusively or with other non-aspirin NSAIDs showed a consistent protective effect related to both HCC incidence and CLD mortality, regardless of the frequency or exclusivity of use," BBS News quoted the researchers as writing in the Journal of National Cancer Institute.

"We are seeing a growing body of evidence suggesting that taking aspirin long-term prevents the development of several types of cancer (in people taking NSAIDs for heart benefits)," Dr. Boris Pasche, an oncologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham who was not involved in the research, told MedPage Today.

It is a new role added to list of protective benefits that the medication can give.

In August, a study also published in the Journal of National Cancer Institute found that people who took aspirin daily were 16 percent less likely to die from cancer, compared to people who don't take the pill.

The overall reduction was driven in part by a 40 percent reduced risk of dying from cancers of the gastrointestinal tract, including esophageal, stomach and colon cancers.

Several studies in a March issue of The Lancet found cancer protection in aspirin-takers, including reduced risks of developing colon, lung and prostate cancers and a reduced risk for cancer spreading in those who had several forms of the disease.

Not every study however has found benefits from taking daily aspirin. An October study in Circulation found heart attack suffers who take NSAIDs were 30 percent more likely to have a second heart attack or die from heart disease within one year of their heart attack, a risk that climbed over time.
In an accompanying editorial published in the same journal, researchers from the department of epidemiology and community medicine at the University of Ottawa in Canada argued while there should be more studies on how aspirin could prevent against liver cancer, researchers should continue to focus on other proven strategies, such as vaccines for hepatitis B and C and reducing obesity and alcohol use.