Coffee consumption and risk of heart failure in the Physicians' Health Study.

BACKGROUND

Previous studies have reported the benefits of coffee consumption on diabetes, stroke, hyperlipidemia, and coronary artery disease (CAD). However, no large-scale long-term prospective study has evaluated the relation between coffee consumption and heart failure (HF) among US population.

OBJECTIVE

To test the hypothesis that coffee consumption is associated with risk of HF among male physicians.

METHODS

We prospectively studied 20,433 middle-aged and older men from the Physicians' Health Study (PHS). Coffee consumption was assessed using a semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire. The incidence of HF was assessed based on self-reports on annual questionnaires which were validated in a subsample using by review of medical records. We used Cox proportional hazard models to compute the hazard ratios (HR) and corresponding 95% confidence intervals (95% CI).

RESULTS

The mean (SD) age of men was 66.4 (9.2) years. During a mean follow-up of 9.3 years, 901 new cases of HF were reported. In a multivariable Cox model adjusting for age, alcohol, smoking, and exercise, the HR (95% CI) of HF were 1.00 (reference), 1.04 (0.84-1.28), 0.90 (0.73-1.11), and 1.09 (0.91-1.30) for coffee consumption of almost never, <1 cup/day, 1 cup/day, and ≥2 cups/day, respectively (P for linear trend - 0.47). In a secondary analysis, dietary caffeine intake was not associated with HF risk: multivariable adjusted HR (95% CI) were 1.00 (reference), 1.07 (0.87-1.31), 0.95 (0.77-1.18), 1.06 (0.86-1.31), and 1.15 (0.92-1.44) across consecutive quintiles of dietary caffeine (P for linear trend - 0.34).

CONCLUSIONS

We found no association between either coffee consumption or dietary caffeine intake with HF risk among US male physicians.