Study finds benefits and harms of coffee drinking depend on individual genes

People often see reports about coffee in newspapers and magazines. Some may introduce the disadvantages of drinking too much coffee, while others will tell you how many cups of coffee you should drink a day to get a certain health benefit. It is really difficult to judge.

However, a new study recently published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry tells us that the amount of coffee people should drink every day depends on your own genes, and the human body will spontaneously adjust our coffee intake to achieve the best effect.

Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health and Brigham and Women's Hospital recently conducted a meta-analysis of 120,000 coffee drinkers of American, European, and African descent.

They found that two gene variants, POR and ABCG2, are used in caffeine metabolism, and two other variants, BDNF and SLC6A4, may affect caffeine's triggering of the body's reward mechanism. The researchers also discovered for the first time two genes related to glucose and lipid metabolism, GCKR and MLXIPL, which are related to the effects of caffeine on the nervous system and human metabolism.

According to Marilyn Cornelis, a nutrition research associate at Harvard University and the lead author of the study, the new candidate genes are not from those that people have focused on before, so this is a very important step in the study of coffee. Their research may help identify people who are most likely to gain health benefits by increasing or reducing their coffee intake.

The new research builds on a previous study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association that found that how much coffee is healthy for an individual depends on their genetic profile.

In the 2006 study, it was found that people with a genetic type that metabolized caffeine quickly benefited from a reduced risk of heart attack if they drank three cups of coffee a day, but people with a genetic type that metabolized coffee more slowly had a 36% increased risk of heart attack if they drank three cups of coffee a day, compared to people with the same genes who only drank one cup of coffee a day.

Daniel Chasman, an assistant professor at Brigham and Women's Hospital and an author of the new study, said his team's findings provide more evidence that genetics can influence how caffeine affects each individual.

According to him, similar to previous genetic analyses of smoking and alcoholism, this study is also an example of the effect of genes on individual behavioral habits.