Phenome-Wide Analysis of Coffee Intake on Health over 20 Years of Follow-Up Among Adults in Hong Kong Osteoporosis Study

Abstract

Background/objectives: There has been limited evidence on the long-term impacts of coffee intake on health. We aimed to investigate the association between coffee intake and the incidence of diseases and mortality risk over 20 years among community-dwelling Chinese adults.

Methods: Participants were from the Hong Kong Osteoporosis Study who attended baseline assessments during 1995-2010. Coffee intake was self-reported through a food frequency questionnaire and was previously validated. Disease diagnoses, which were mapped into 1795 distinct phecodes, and mortality data were obtained from linkage with territory-wide electronic health records. Cox models were used to estimate the association between coffee intake and the incidence of each disease outcome and mortality among individuals without a history of the respective medical condition at baseline. All models were adjusted for age, sex, body mass index, smoking, alcohol drinking, and education.

Results: Among the 7420 included participants (mean age 53.2 years, 72.2% women), 54.0% were non-coffee drinkers, and only 2.7% consumed more than one cup of coffee per day. Over a median follow-up of 20.0 years, any coffee intake was associated with a reduced risk of dementia, atrial fibrillation, painful respirations, infections, atopic dermatitis, and dizziness at a false discovery rate (FDR) of <0.05. Furthermore, any coffee intake was associated with an 18% reduced risk of all-cause mortality (95% confidence interval = 0.73-0.93).

Conclusion: In a population with relatively low coffee consumption, any coffee intake is linked to a lower risk of several neurological, circulatory, and respiratory diseases and symptoms, as well as mortality.

Keywords: PheWAS; coffee; health outcomes; mortality; prospective cohort study.

Figure 1

Manhattan plot for the phenome-wide analysis of any coffee intake on disease outcomes. Labeled symbols are the diseases significantly associated with any coffee intake at FDR < 0.05. The dotted red line indicates the significance threshold at FDR = 0.05. All estimates were calculated based on Cox models adjusted for age, sex, body mass index, smoking, alcohol drinking, and education. The up-pointing triangles indicate positive associations (hazard ratio > 1), whereas the down-pointing triangles indicate inverse associations (hazard ratio < 1).

Figure 2

Association between any coffee intake and specific disease and mortality outcomes selected from the literature. All models were adjusted for age, sex, body mass index, smoking, alcohol drinking, and education. Filled circles indicate a false discovery rate < 0.05 and empty circles indicate non-significant estimates. CI, confidence interval; HR, hazard ratio.