Copious Coffee May Up Arthritis Risk

L O N D O N, July 26 -- Drinking copious amounts ofcoffee each day may increase the risk of developing rheumatoidarthritis, Finnish scientists said today.

A study by doctors at the National Public Health Institute in Helsinki showed that the more coffee a person drank, thegreater the chances of getting the disabling disease thatafflicts millions of people worldwide.

People who drank 11 or more cups a day were almost 15 timesmore likely to get the illness than non-coffee drinkers.

Risk for Rheumatoid Arthritis

“Coffee drinking proved to be a risk factor for rheumatoidarthritis,” Professor Kimmo Aho, one of the researchers, saidin a telephone interview.

The scientists do not know why coffee seems to raise therisk of the disease, but they suspect an unknown ingredientcould trigger the production of rheumatoid factor (RF) markerantibodies for the disease.

The antibodies appear years before a person developssymptoms of rheumatoid arthritis and predict the progression ofthe disease.

The scientists monitored the coffee intake and thedevelopment of the disease in 6,809 people over 15 years.

No Concern for Consumers?

None of the people had signs of the disease when the studybegan, but a decade later 126 developed the disease, and 89 had RFantibodies at the time they were diagnosed.

In a report in the medical journal Annals of the RheumaticDiseases, the researchers said, “The number of cups of coffeedrunk daily was directly proportional to the prevalence of RFpositivity.”

The increase risk was not due to age, sex, smoking, weightor cholesterol levels. Aho and his colleagues called for furtherstudies to confirm their findings.

A spokesman for the Coffee Science Information Center, whichis financed by coffee manufacturers, said consumers should notbe concerned by the research.

“You can’t draw conclusions from one study,” he said,adding that when the study was done coffee was usually boiledand not filtered.