God Bless AASLD, Natap

[Willy50]

And to think..... you thought that coffee was ONLY associated with lower liver damage?  Check this one out;

I'm still pinching myself.  

Willy

_______________________________________________________________________________
http://www.natap.org/2010/AASLD/AASLD_26.htm

Coffee is associated with virologic response in chronic Hepatitis C: Findings from the Hepatitis C Long - Term Treatment against Cirrhosis Trial (HALT - C) .


   Reported by Jules Levin
AASLD Nov 2 2010 Boston

N.D.Freedman1; T.M.Curto2; K.Lindsay3; E.C.Wright4; R.Sinha1; J.E.Everhart5 1. Nutritional Epidemiology Branch, Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, Rockville, MD; 2. New England Research Institutes, Watertown, MA; 3. Division of Gastrointestinal and Liver Diseases, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA; 4. Office of the Director, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, Bethesda, MD; 5. Division of Digestive Diseases and Nutrition, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, Bethesda, MD

Introduction: Higher coffee consumption has been associated with slower progression of pre-existing liver disease and lower risk of hepatocellular carcinoma. The relationship between coffee consumption and response to anti-viral treatment in CHC has not been evaluated.

Methods: Eight hundred eighty five patients with CHC, Ishak stage 3-6, and failure to respond to previous standard interferon therapy completed a food frequency questionnaire assessing typical coffee intake prior to retreatment with peginterferon alfa-2a (180 ug/wk) and ribavirin (1000-1200 mg/day) in the lead-in phase of HALT-C. Outcomes included a two log10 drop in HCV RNA level at week 12 of treatment (early virologic response, EVR, n=466), undetectable HCV RNA at week 20 of treatment (W20VR, n=320), and sustained virologic response (SVR, n=157) at week 72 (24 weeks after treatment completion).

Results: At baseline, coffee intake over the previous year was coded as none (n=133), < 1 cup (n=253), 1 to /= 3 cups per day, the median log10 drop was 3.7 (1.8-4.2) (p for trend across categories /= 3 cups per day. Coffee intake at baseline was associated with Caucasian race, current alcohol drinking, rs12979860 (IL28B) genotype, tolerating the maximum dose of peginterferon alfa-2a during treatment, higher baseline log10 HCV RNA, hemoglobin, platelet, and neutrophil count, lower AST/ALT ratio, and less cirrhosis at biopsy (p<0.05 for all). In multivariate analysis which included these covariates, the association of coffee with outcomes was attenuated but remained for EVR (p=0.005), W20VR (p=0.006), and SVR (p=0.039).

Conclusion: Pre-treatment coffee intake was independently associated with improved virologic response during peginterferon alfa-2a and ribavirin in the HALT-C trial.

daily coffee consumption of 3 or more cups was associated with 25.8% SVR vs 20.7% for 1-<3 cups and 12.7% for <1 cup and these are all statistically significant. Coffee increased EVR & week20 responses too.

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Yes, I know that the results are based on a questionaire and that some will dismiss this as bad science, but if I recall that is also how they derived the information on POT causing fibrosis and various self reporting studies such as the effects of alcohol.  -

Anyway.... interesting reading and in turn it may trigger more pointed studies to bet to the bottom of the issue.

Willy

[babs824]

some good news tonite, big thanx

[RobertBeWell]

WHOO HOO! I just brewed myself up a triple shot!

Wonder if it will cure me three times faster?

:-0

[Trinity4]

I pumped in the house from an undergound tank but I couldn't get the damn virus to go away.  ;)

[paen53]

Good stuff, Willy,

My Dr. strongly recommended I drink  at least three cups of coffee a day during tx as well. Now that's an order I loved to hear!

[eureka254]

Investors with an eye on Merck and Vertex will now be buying up Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks.

[orphanedhawk]

Good news but coffee being good for us is nothing new.
http://www.hepatitis-central.com/mt/archives/2008/11/coffee_drinkers.html

The other goodie is chocolate;
http://esciencenews.com/articles/2010/04/15/study.shows.potential.benefit.dark.chocolate.liver.disease.patients

Since my transplant I drink a minimum of 4 cups of coffee daily and gobble up the dark chocolate, its my favorite medicine. :)
OH

[Willy50]

More evidence coffee may slow liver disease

Last Updated: 2010-11-03 17:30:03 -0400 (Reuters Health)

"There's definitely a relationship, we don't know exactly what it is yet," between coffee and fibrosis, Dr. Harrison said. He called the findings "provocative" and "hypothesis-generating," noting that a prospective interventional study would be needed to determine a causal relationship. "

By Anne Harding

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Drinking coffee could help slow the progression of fibrosis in patients with fatty liver disease, according to new research presented at the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases' annual meeting in Boston.

And a separate study presented at the same meeting found that patients with chronic hepatitis C who drank the most coffee and had failed standard treatment fared much better with retreatment.

Since the early 1990s, several studies have suggested benefits of coffee drinking for liver health, Dr. Jeffrey W. Molloy and Dr. Stephen A. Harrison and their colleagues at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, note in their report. In 2009, Dr. Harrison noted in an interview, two studies showed drinking about 2.5 cups of coffee daily reduced the risk of hepatic steatosis in patients with hepatitis C.

For the current study, the Texas researchers used a group of asymptomatic individuals whom they had initially screened for liver disease with ultrasound, giving them a "nice clean cohort of patients" with no liver disease who served as controls, Dr. Harrison told Reuters Health. Patients with ultrasound tests suggesting fatty liver disease underwent percutaneous liver biopsies.

Their analysis included 177 controls, 89 patients with simple steatosis, 31 patients with nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) and stage 0-1 fibrosis, and nine patients with NASH and stage 2-4 fibrosis.

Among the NASH patients, the researchers found, those with less severe disease drank significantly more coffee than those with more severe fibrosis. The patients with NASH stage 0-1 fibrosis consumed an average of 413 mg of caffeine and 312 mg of coffee, compared to 189 mg of caffeine (p=0.035) and 79 mg of coffee (p=0.03) for the NASH stage 2-4 fibrosis patients.

The 75th quartile for daily coffee consumption was 343 mg, or about 2.5 cups, the researchers found. Ten percent of patients who consumed this much coffee had NASH stage 2-4 disease, compared to roughly half of the patients who didn't drink coffee at all. Logistic regression analysis showed that the risk of severe fibrosis declined as caffeine and coffee consumption rose (p=0.023 for both).

"There's definitely a relationship, we don't know exactly what it is yet," between coffee and fibrosis, Dr. Harrison said. He called the findings "provocative" and "hypothesis-generating," noting that a prospective interventional study would be needed to determine a causal relationship.

Nevertheless, he and his colleagues conclude, "moderate caffeine and/or coffee consumption may be a benign adjunct to the comprehensive management of NASH patients."

In the second study, Dr. Neal D. Freeman of the National Cancer Institute and his colleagues found that among 885 patients with chronic hepatitis C who failed standard treatment with interferon, those who drank more coffee responded better to retreatment with peg interferon alfa 2a and ribavirin.

The median log10 drop from baseline to week 12 of retreatment was 1.7 among non-coffee drinkers, compared to 3.7 for those who drank three cups or more daily (p for trend across categories less then 0.0001).

There also were "highly statistically significant trends" in early virologic response (EVR, defined as a two log10 drop in HCV RNA at week 12), undetectable HCV RNA at week 20 of treatment, and sustained virologic response (SVR, at week 72, 24 weeks after the end of treatment).

For example, 11.3% of non-coffee drinking patients had an SVR, compared to 25.8% of patients who drank at least three cups a day. The EVR rate was 45.7% in non-coffee drinkers and 72.7% in the heaviest coffee drinkers. And among the non-coffee drinkers, 26.3% had undetectable levels of HCV RNA at week 20 of the study, compared to 52.3% of people who drank three or more cups daily (p for trend in all three categories less then 0.0001).

[almawe]

Very Interesting, and how does the intake of coffe sit with the 'water consumption' whilst on treatment.  I have always been led to believe that for every cup of coffee that is drunk,  one must drink 2 glasses of water to compensate for the dehydrating effects of the coffee.  That makes the daily water intake HUGE!..l keep thinking of the line from a Bob Dylan song...'one more cup of coffee before l go, to the valley below'...off to make a cup of coffee..extra strong!

[Mary4now]

Thanks, coffee, is good, specially the organic fair trade type at Trader Joes.
its seems everyone wins with that one.