Of the approximately 402,000 participants, about 42,000 said they drank no coffee and about 15,000 said they drank six or more cups a day. Most people said they drank about two or three cups each day.
Researchers found that women who drank four or five cups a day had a 16% lower risk of death, while men who drank that much had a 12% lower risk. Women who drank six or more cups had a 15% lower risk of death, while men had a 10% lower risk.
Even drinking a single cup had a positive effect, the researchers said, as women drinking one cup lowered their risk by 5% and men by 6%.
By 2008, approximately 52,000 of the participants had died.
“In this large prospective study, coffee consumption was inversely associated with total and cause-specific mortality,” the researchers concluded. But they cautioned that whether this was a causal or associational finding “cannot be determined from our data.”
