If you are a regular Joe, or Jane, you need not worry about additional risks to your ticker arising that extra cup of joe.

In fact, drinking large amounts of coffee does not increase a person's risk for dying sooner than expected and may actually be protective, says a study published June 17 in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Drinking up to 6 cups per day is not associated with increased deaths in either men or women. The study finds that caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee can be linked to a smaller rate of death from heart disease.

"Coffee consumption has been linked to various beneficial and detrimental health effects, but data on its relation with death were lacking," says Esther Lopez-Garcia, the study's lead author. "Coffee consumption was not associated with a higher risk of mortality in middle-aged men and women."

The data comes from a large-scale study of the health and longevity of more than 120,000 women and men participating in the Nurses' health Study and the Health Professionals' Follow-Up Study from 1980 to 2004. Participants were free of heart disease and cancer when they first joined the study.

The data showed that women consuming two to three cups of caffeinated coffee per day had a 25 percent lower risk of death from heart disease during the follow-up period as compared with women who did not drink coffee. They also shows an 18 percent lower risk of death caused by something other than cancer or heart disease with compared to those who abstained from coffee.

The news was not so good for men, who showed neither a higher nor a lower risk of death during the follow-up period, which lasted from 1986 to 2004.

"The possibility of a modest benefit of coffee consumption on heart disease, cancer, and other causes of death needs to be further investigated," Lopez-Garcia said.

Study participants filled out questionnaires every two to four years that included questions about how frequently they drank coffee, other diet habits, smoking, and health conditions. While accounting for other risk factors, such as body size, tobacco smoking, diet, researchers discovered that people who consumed more coffee were less likely to die during the follow-up period.

This was mainly because of lower risk for heart disease deaths among coffee drinkers. The Lopez-Garcia team found no association between coffee consumption and cancer deaths.

One interesting aspect of the findings was that results appeared to be unrelated to caffeine. Participants who consumed decaffeinated coffee also had lower death rates than people who abstained from drinking coffee.

The study, "The Relationship of Coffee Consumption with Mortality," was supported by National Institutes of Health research grants.

SAY WHAT?

Diabetes has been linked to heart disease, stroke, kidney failure, blindness, and now hearing loss, says a study published June 17 in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

The researchers suggest that people diagnosed with diabetes be regularly screened for hearing loss.

"We found that hearing loss was much more common in people with diabetes than people without the disease," says Kathleen E. Bainbridge, the study's lead researcher. "The hearing loss we detected did not seem to be caused by other factors such as exposure to loud noises, certain medicines, and smoking."

Using the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, collected by the National Center for Health Statistics from 1999 to 2004, Bainbridge and her colleagues sifted through data gathered from more than 5,000 adults aged 20 to 69 who completed a hearing exam and a diabetes questionnaire.

Baindbridge's team found hearing loss for self-reported diabetics was nearly double that of adults without diabetes. Diabetes-related hearing loss was found in both sexes; all groups of race or ethnicity, education, and income; and all age groups but the oldest.

"It is possible that high blood sugar levels damage the small blood vessels and nerves of the inner ear, resulting in hearing impairment," says Bainbridge.

The study, "Diabetes and Hearing Impairment in the United States: Audiometric Evidence from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys, 1999 to 2004," also will be published in the July 1, 2008, print issue of Annals of Internal Medicine. The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases funded the research.

E-mail Ven Griva at ven.griva@copleynews.com or write to P.O. Box 120190, San Diego, CA 92112.

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