Coffee consumption and risk of prostate cancer: a systematic review and meta-analysis

To conduct a systematic review with meta-analysis of cohort studies to evaluate the association of coffee consumption with the risk of prostate cancer.

PubMed, Web of Science and Embase were searched for eligible studies up to September 2020.

Cohort studies were included.

Two researchers independently reviewed the studies and extracted the data. Data synthesis was performed via systematic review and meta-analysis of eligible cohort studies. Meta-analysis was performed with the "metan" and "glst" commands in Stata 14.0.

Prostate cancer was the main outcome. It was classified as localised prostate cancer which included localised or non-aggressive cancers; advanced prostate cancer which included advanced or aggressive cancers; or fatal prostate cancer which included fatal/lethal cancers or prostate cancer-specific deaths.

Sixteen prospective cohort studies were finally included, with 57 732 cases of prostate cancer and 1 081 586 total cohort members. Higher coffee consumption was significantly associated with a lower risk of prostate cancer. Compared with the lowest category of coffee consumption, the pooled relative risk (RR) was 0.91 (95% CI 0.84 to 0.98), I²= 53.2%) for the highest category of coffee consumption. There was a significant linear trend for the association (p=0.006 for linear trend), with a pooled RR of 0.988 (95% CI 0.981 to 0.995) for each increment of one cup of coffee per day. For localised, advanced and fatal prostate cancer, the pooled RRs were 0.93 (95% CI 0.87 to 0.99), 0.88 (95% CI 0.71 to 1.09) and 0.84 (95% CI 0.66 to 1.08), respectively. No evidence of publication bias was indicated in this meta-analysis.

This study suggests that a higher intake of coffee may be associated with a lower risk of prostate cancer.