Coffee boosts hep C treatment response

By Laura Macfarlane on 9 March 2011

Hepatitis C patients with advanced chronic liver disease are more likely to respond to peg interferon and ribavirin treatment if they are heavy coffee drinkers, research suggests.

Patients who drank more than three cups of coffee a day prior to treatment were three times more likely to have a virologic response to therapy compared with non-coffee drinkers, a study of almost 900 patients with advanced Hepatitis C found.

Three-quarters of these coffee drinkers had a significant drop in serum HCV RNA level by 12 weeks post-treatment, compared with only half of non-coffee drinkers.

Furthermore, one quarter of heavy coffee drinkers had a sustained virologic response (defined as the absence of detectable serum HCV RNA at week 72), compared with just 11% of non-coffee drinkers.

Although these associations were attenuated after adjusting for factors such as alcohol consumption, smoking and ethnicity, they remained significant.

No effect was observed for tea drinking, and the study did not distinguish between decaffeinated and caffeinated coffee drinkers in the analysis.

The authors said it was unlikely that coffee had a direct antiviral effect.

Rather, it was more likely that “coffee would have a facilitating effect on response to peginteferon and ribavirin by a mechanism yet to be understood,” they wrote.

Alternatively the association could also simply be due to chance, they said, adding further studies were needed.

Gastroenterology 2011 doi: 10.1053/j.gastro.2011.02.061

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