Coffee may protect people against irregular heartbeats, study finds | US news
Drinking coffee may protect people from irregular heartbeats, despite popular belief, a new study suggests.
The Does Eliminating Coffee Avoid Fibrillation (Decaf) clinical trial found that 200 patients with persistent irregular heartbeats had a “significantly” lower risk of disease recurrence if they were in the study group assigned to consume coffee rather than those who abstained from it – 47% to 64%.
The Journal of the American Medical Association published the findings on Sunday, which were also presented at the American Heart Association conference in New Orleans.
The research by Gregory Marcus and his team comes as more than 10 million people in the United States have been diagnosed with atrial fibrillation, a condition colloquially known as A-fib that causes palpitations as well as potentially heart failure, blood clots and strokes.
It’s not uncommon for medical providers to tell people with fibrosis A to stop consuming caffeinated coffee, which can trigger an elevated heart rate.
But the results of the Decaf trial might make some rethink that advice.
The six-month trial involved older adults from the United States, Canada and Australia who regularly drank coffee at some point in the previous five years. Participants were randomly divided into two groups: those who reduced their caffeine intake and those who drank at least one cup per day, with each self-reporting their coffee intake during intermittent video checks.
Marcus and colleagues wrote that they used tools, such as electrocardiograms taken in doctors’ offices and portable monitors, to determine if and when participants had an irregular heart rhythm.
They ultimately determined that participants who drank coffee were 17% less likely to have a recurrence of an irregular heartbeat during the trial and waited longer to have the first case during the study.
Marcus, a cardiologist and professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, told NBC News that the trial results tell him “how protective caffeinated coffee appears to be in preventing atrial fibrillation.”
As the outlet noted, the study had obvious limitations. They included the effects of caffeine from drinks other than coffee and did not track differences in participants’ exercise habits or diets.
Meanwhile, Johanna Contreras, a cardiologist at Mount Sinai Fuster Heart Hospital in New York, noted to NBC that her takeaway from the study released Sunday was that it was OK for people with atrial fibrillation to consume coffee in moderation. But she didn’t go so far as to say the drink had protective qualities.
She told the network: “It shows that you can have a cup of coffee in the morning and it’s OK if you have A-fib. »
