HHS HealthBeat (January 10, 2012)

Coffee up, depression down

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I’m Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

This isn’t a medical treatment, but a study finds that women who drink more coffee are less likely to develop clinical depression.  Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health saw that in 10 years of data on about 50,700 women with an average age of 63, who had no diagnosis of clinical depression at the start.

Researcher Fariba Mirzaei:

``The risk of depression appears to decrease for women with increasing consumption of caffeinated coffee.’’  (5 seconds)

Women who drank four cups of coffee a day had a 20 percent lower risk than people who drank little or no coffee. The study found no benefit from drinking products containing less caffeine, or decaf.

The study in Archives of Internal Medicine was supported by the National Institutes of Health.

Learn more at hhs.gov.

HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I’m Ira Dreyfuss.

Last revised: January 10, 2012