Coffee and cardiovascular risk; an epidemiological study

This thesis comprises several studies on the effect of coffee and caffeine on cardiovascular risk in general, and the effect on serum lipids, blood pressure and selected hemostatic variables in particular. The association between coffee use and cardiovascular morbidity and mortality was evaluated by a review of the published results of 17 cohort studies and 10 casecontrol studies. In the interpretation of the results of these studies, it is important to take into account the strong relationship of coffee consumption and other habits associated with cardiovascular disease, such as smoking and a high dietary fat intake. When these confounders are not considered in the analysis, the risk of coffee use for cardiovascular disease may be overestimated. Most case-control studies yielded positive results, i.e. coffee use was observed to increase the risk of a cardiovascular event. Casecontrol studies, however, are subject to several forms of bias which could lead to overestimation of the coffee-cardiovascular disease association. The majority of cohort studies, which are more reliable, support the hypothesis that coffee use does not affect the risk of cardiovascular disease