Drinking coffee may protect people against irregular heartbeats, despite the conventional wisdom to the contrary, according to a new study.
The Does Eliminating Coffee Avoid Fibrillation (Decaf) clinical trial found 200 patients with persistent irregular heartbeats had a “significantly” lower risk of the condition recurring if they belonged to the study group that was allocated coffee consumption rather than the one abstaining from it – 47% to 64%.
The Journal of the American Medical Association on Sunday published those findings, which were also presented at the American Heart Association conference in New Orleans.
Gregory Marcus and his team’s research comes as more than 10 million people in the US 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 has not been unusual for medical providers to tell those with A-fib to stop consuming caffeinated coffee, which can trigger an elevated heart rate.
But the results of the Decaf trial may prompt some to rethink that advice.
The six-month trial involved older adults from the US, Canada and Australia who regularly drank coffee at some point in the previous five years. Participants were randomly assigned to two groups: those who cut caffeine and those who had at least one cup daily, with everyone self-reporting their coffee intake during intermittent video checkups.
Marcus and his collaborators wrote that they used tools, such as electrocardiograms taken at doctors’ offices and wearable monitors, to determine if and when participants had an irregular heartbeat.
They ultimately determined that participants who drank coffee were 17% less likely to have a recurrence of an irregular heartbeat during the trial and went longer before they had their first instance of one amid the study.
Marcus, a cardiologist and professor of medicine at University of California, San Francisco, told NBC News the trial’s outcome to him indicates “how protective caffeinated coffee does seem to be to prevent atrial fibrillation”.
As the outlet noted, the study did have obvious limitations. They included the effects of caffeine from beverages other than coffee as well as not tracking differences in the participants’ exercise habits or diets.
Meanwhile, Johanna Contreras, a cardiologist at New York’s Mount Sinai Fuster Heart ospital, remarked to NBC that her takeaway from the study published on Sunday was that it was fine for those with atrial fibrillation to consume coffee in moderation. But she stopped short of saying the drink had a protective quality.
She said to the network: “This shows you can have a cup of coffee in the morning and be OK if you have A-fib.”
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