MONDAY, June 26 (HealthDay News) -- Drinking lots of coffee cut women's risk of developing diabetes in an 11-year study, researchers report. But it was the antioxidants, not caffeine, in the brew that probably did the trick.
In fact, diabetes risk was reduced most in participants who preferred decaffeinated coffee, the researchers said.
"In our study, for whatever reason, it doesn't look like caffeine has anything to do with it," said lead researcher Mark A. Pereira, an associate professor of epidemiology and community health at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.
His team published its findings Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
In the study, Pereira's team gathered data on nearly 29,000 older women who answered questions about risk factors for diabetes such as age, body mass index, physical activity and smoking. They also reported on their consumption of various foods and beverages, including regular and decaffeinated coffee.
Adjusting for those risk factors, the researchers found that women who drank more than six cups a day of any type of coffee were 22 percent less likely to develop type 2 diabetes, the kind that occurs in adult life, compared to those who avoided coffee.
But diabetes risk dropped even more -- by 33 percent -- for those who drank more than six cups a day of decaf, the study authors found.
Pereira pointed out that coffee has many components, including powerful antioxidant chemicals similar to those found in berries and grapes.
"When you get up to four or five or more cups per day, you might have very powerful antioxidant activity," he said. "That might be important for protecting the pancreas' beta cells from oxidant damage," he said.
Beta cells produce insulin. Adult, or type 2, diabetes, occurs as the body slowly loses its ability to produce insulin.
The report was described as "not surprising" by Rob van Dam, a research scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health. He was part of a research team in the Netherlands who first reported the protective effect of coffee in 2002. Several other studies, including one done at the Harvard School of Public Health, have backed up those original findings.
"We found exactly the same protective effect of decaffeinated coffee," van Dam said. "People think that if coffee causes it, it must be the caffeine, but coffee is a very complex mixture," he added.
One component of coffee that has caught van Dam's attention is chlorogenic acid, which seems to be able to slow the absorption of sugar by cells. Studies in rats found that the molecule lowered blood-sugar levels, he said.
There's another reason to hope that chlorogenic acid is beneficial: According to van Dam, it's abundant in both red wine and chocolate. "People think that nutritionists are always recommending things they don't like, but that's not true," he said.
Still, he and Pereira agreed that it's much too early to single out any one component of coffee as beneficial.
"Clearly, the next step is experimental studies in humans," van Dam said.
"It's going to take some really meticulous clinical trials," Pereira added.
The study was funded by a grant from the U.S. National Cancer Institute.
Meanwhile, in a joint statement released Monday, The American Diabetes
Association and American Heart Association called for greater
prevention and treatment efforts to stem the continuous rise in diabetes and in cardiovascular-related deaths that related to under-treated risk factors.
"The importance of identifying a core set of risk factors such as pre-diabetes and diabetes, prehypertension and hypertension, dyslipidemia and obesity cannot be overstated," said Dr. Robert H. Eckel, president of the AHA. "It is long past time to start getting these risk factors under control through lifestyle changes and medication. It's not as if we
don't know how. The research is there," he said.
More information
Find out if you're at risk for type 2 diabetes at the American Diabetes Association 
.
MONDAY, June 19 (HealthDay News) -- The number of new cases of type 2 diabetes among middle-aged Americans has doubled over the past 30 years, researchers report.
"There has been tremendous concern, but probably not enough concern, about the emerging epidemic of diabetes," said Dr. Robert Rizza, a professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic and president of the American Diabetes Association. "It doesn't take long to be doubling before the numbers are simply too great to be even conceived of."
"We've got to stop this, and, of course, it's obesity which is driving it," Rizza added. "This is a biologic weapon which has been unleashed on our population -- its name is diabetes."
Experts agree that the great increase in obesity over the same time frame appears to be responsible for the growing incidence of diabetes. An estimated two-thirds of adult Americans are now overweight or obese.
"These [diabetes numbers] warrant monitoring, especially if we continue to see increases in the trends of obesity," said study lead author Dr. Caroline S. Fox, a medical officer at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute's Framingham Heart Study.
The study findings appear in the June 19 issue of the journal Circulation.
In type 2 diabetes, the body either doesn't produce enough insulin -- the hormone that converts blood sugar to energy for cells -- or the cells ignore the insulin. Left untreated, the disease can produce complications such as heart disease, blindness, nerve and kidney damage.
In their study, Fox and her colleagues collected data on 3,104 men and women, ages 40 to 55, who participated in the Framingham Offspring study. All participants were diabetes-free at the start of the study, and they received a routine physical examination during the 1970s, the 1980s, and the 1990s. They were also followed for eight years to track new cases of diabetes.
The researchers found that the odds of developing type 2 diabetes increased 40 percent from the 1970s to the '80s, and doubled between the '70s and '90s. The data revealed that among women, there was an 84 percent increase in the incidence of type 2 diabetes in the '90s, compared with the '70s. In men, the incidence of type 2 diabetes more than doubled in the '90s compared with the '70s.
This trend must be reversed to avoid serious repercussions for the U.S. economy and health-care system, Rizza said.
"It requires a concerted effort by our health-care system, by our government, by all parts of society to realize that this epidemic is endangering not only all the people alive, but our children and our children's children," Rizza said. "Our health-care system and our nation's economy cannot tolerate one in three people having diabetes."
One expert thinks the only way to correct the problem is by making a total lifestyle change.
"This epidemic results, almost entirely, from obesity and sedentary behavior," said Cathy Nonas, director of the obesity and diabetes program at North General Hospital, in New York City, and a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association.
"The more sedentary we are, the fatter we get, the more insulin resistance we get, the more at risk we are for type 2 diabetes," Nonas said. "We have to maintain healthier weights. We have to be active."
More information
To learn more, visit the American Diabetes Association .
