Caffeine good for cancer, bad for miscarriages?

by Rob Peters | January 22, 2008 at 10:50 am

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There are so many of these types of stories, I don't know what to think anymore. Caffeine's good for this, bad for that. Alcohol does this, doesn't do that. Next they'll tell us chocolate is good for precision sports like darts and curling, but bad for masculinity retention.

LONDON (Reuters) - Two new studies paint a conflicting health picture for women coffee drinkers, with one suggesting caffeine may lower the risk of ovarian cancer and the other showing it doubles the chances of miscarriage.

The research published this week in separate medical journals adds to mounting evidence indicating the amount of caffeine a person consumes may directly impact one's health.

"With regard to caffeine and caffeine-containing beverages, we generally observed a lower risk of ovarian cancer with increasing intake," Shelley Tworoger of Harvard Medical School and colleagues wrote in the journal Cancer on Tuesday.

The researchers, who examined data taken from health questionnaires of more than 121,000 women aged 30-35 as part of a Utah study, said further work was needed to pinpoint the biological reasons behind the protective benefits.

But for pregnant women caffeine may prove harmful, another team of U.S. researchers reported on Monday. They said pregnant women who drink two or more cups of coffee a day have twice the risk of having a miscarriage as those who avoid caffeine.