Drinking Coffee Won't Give You Heart Trouble: Study

According to a study published in the journal BMC Medicine, people who like drinking coffee can continue to drink it, in moderation of course, without worrying about running the risk of developing atrial fibrillation -- a heart condition that causes an irregular and often abnormally fast heart rate. The study was the largest of its kind and included four other studies, nearly 250,000 individuals and was done over the course of 12 years."This is the largest prospective study to date on the association between coffee consumption and risk of atrial fibrillation. We find no evidence that high consumption of coffee increases the risk of atrial fibrillation," said lead author Susanna Larsson from Karolinska Institutet, Sweden.

Atrial fibrillation (AF), is the most frequent form of irregular heartbeat, causing a substantially increased risk of stroke, heart failure and all-cause mortality. It has previously been speculated that high coffee consumption may increase the risk of developing atrial fibrillation (AF).

In this study, researchers first followed for up to 12 years 41,881 men and 34,594 women who, in 1997, reported how many cups of coffee they consumed. There were 4,311 and 2,730 incident AF cases in men and women, respectively, in the two cohorts. The median daily coffee consumption was three cups among both men and women.

In their analysis, the researchers found that coffee consumption was not associated with AF incidence in these cohort studies, even in more extreme levels of coffee consumption. This lack of association was confirmed in a follow-up meta-analysis that included the present two cohorts and four other prospective studies, giving a total of 10,406 cases of AF diagnosed among 248,910 individuals.