In a study that spanned seven years and involved more than 125,000 subjects, a team of researchers at Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, Calif., concluded that the more coffee a person drank, the less likely he or she would be to develop the type of liver cirrhosis caused by alcohol.

There are more than 5 million cases of chronic liver disease and cirrhosis in the United States, reports the National Center for Health Statistics, and nearly 28,000 people die of chronic liver disease every year. Cirrhosis, a disease that causes progressive damage and impaired function of the liver, can be caused by alcohol, viruses, obesity or genetic problems.

The benefit of drinking coffee does not seem to apply generally to liver disease.

Heavy Drinkers Benefit Most

"We did not see a similar protective association between coffee and non-alcoholic cirrhosis," noted Arthur Klatsky, MD, an investigator with Kaiser Permanente's Division of Research and the lead author of the study.

Nor was there a similar effect among people who drank tea, the researchers noted -- which suggests there is something in coffee other than caffeine that helps protect against alcoholic cirrhosis.

People who drank one cup of coffee a day were 20 percent less likely, on average, to have alcoholic cirrhosis, the study found. The reduction was 40 percent for people drinking two or three cups a day, and the reduction in risk was 80 percent for those drinking four or more cups of coffee a day.

"Even allowing for statistical variation, this shows there is a clear association between coffee consumption and protection against alcoholic cirrhosis," said Klatsky.

The biggest apparent protective benefits were observed among the individuals who consumed the most alcohol.

Lower Liver Enzyme Levels

That said, "this is not a recommendation to drink coffee," Klatsky emphasized. "Nor is it a recommendation that the way to deal with heavy alcohol consumption is to drink more coffee. The value of this study is that it may offer us some clues as to the biochemical processes taking place inside liver cells that could help in finding new ways to protect the liver against injury."

Kaiser Permanente researchers first reported the inverse relationship between coffee and cirrhosis in 1993.

Subsequently, several other studies confirmed that coffee drinkers are less likely to have high levels of enzymes in the liver. Those liver enzymes can be markers for inflammation or indications of other problems, including disease.