Does drinking coffee regularly slashes diabetes risk by 50 per cent?

Washington DC: Love drinking coffee? It may pay off as a new study has revealed that people who drink the beverage regularly are 50 percent less likely to develop Type 2 diabetes as compared to those who don't.

According to Demosthenes B. Panagiotakos, an extensive research has revealed that coffee drinking exhibits both beneficial and aggravating health effects.

The key maybe an inflammation-lowering effect of coffee.

Panagiotakos further said that an inverse relation between coffee intake and diabetes has been reported in many prospective studies whereas some have yielded insignificant results, the Globe and Mail reported.

In 2001 and 2002, the researchers analysed a random sample of more than 1,300 men and women age 18 years and older in Athens. They termed drinking less than 1.5 cups of coffee per day as "casual" coffee, and more than 1.5 cups a day as "habitual" drinking.

Ten years later, 191 people had developed diabetes, including 13 per cent of the men and 12 per cent of the women in the original group.

54 per cent of people who reported higher coffee consumption had lower likelihoods of developing diabetes compared with non-coffee drinkers, even after smoking, high blood pressure, family history of diabetes and intake of other caffeinated beverages was taken in consideration.

The authors explained that levels of serum amyloid, one of the inflammatory markers in the blood, seemed to explain some of the relationship between coffee and diabetes.

The research is reported in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition.