Drinking coffee may change how some of our genes are expressed, which could help explain its numerous health benefits.
Studies suggest that people who聽drink coffee are less likely to get certain illnesses, such as heart disease, but we don鈥檛 know why.
To聽learn more, Mohsen Ghanbari at Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and his colleagues looked at whether coffee consumption is associated with the presence of certain epigenetic markers 鈥� chemical tags聽on DNA聽鈥� that increase or decrease the activity of certain genes that may influence health.
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They looked for particular markers known as methyl groups in almost 16,000 people of European and African American descent in the the US and Europe.
The more cups of coffee a person drank per day, the more likely they were to have altered levels of methyl groups at 11 particular DNA sites. This was still true after age, body mass index, smoking, alcohol consumption and other factors that may have influenced the results were taken into account.
The methyl groups tended to be attached to genes that play roles in digestion, processing harmful chemicals and controlling inflammation.
These are 鈥渢antalising clues鈥� to how epigenetics could explain some of coffee鈥檚 health effects, says Peter Molloy at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Australia. But more studies are needed to prove that the markers alter the activity of these genes and that this affects our health, he says.
bioRxiv
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