Does Drinking Coffee Increase Pancreatic Cancer Risk?

When coffee is roasted, the carcinogen 3,4 benzopyrene is formed. There have also been identified two other possible carcinogens found in coffee.

In 1981 I had an exchange with Professor Brian MacMahon of the Harvard School of Public Health. He had done a study in the Boston area and had found that the drinking of three cups of coffee a day increased the risk of pancreatic cancer by a factor of 2.7. He felt that coffee drinking was the cause of 50% of all pancreatic cancers. He stopped drinking coffee and replaced coffee with tea in his office. Yet MacMahon was not all that certain that carcinogens in coffee were the cause of pancreatic cancer.

In England prior to 1948 people there drank tea and very little coffee. However, after 1948, there was a vast increase in coffee drinking in England, Dr. Tim Spencer of the St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London in 1981 cast much light on the MacMahon study. He plotted the importation of coffee into England between 1948 and 1973. During that time, the importation of coffee increased by 120%. Also during that time the death rate from pancreatic cancer in England increased by 50%.

Dr. A.J. McMichael in Australia reviewed the MacMahon and Spencer reports and had this to add. He gave reference that coffee drinking increased the production of the intestinal hormone, gastrin. He said that with minor animals, coffee stimulates the production of gastrin, and gastrin stimulates pancreatic hyperplasia and neoplasia.

In 1985 Ana Marie Comary Schally of Tulane University reported that pancreatic cancer seems to be hormone induced. She gave a reference that treatment of pancreatic cancer with tamoxifen had shown some benefit. She and others in Mexico then treated a few far-advanced patients with pancreatic cancer with liver metastases, with the LH-RH agonist D-Trp-6-LH-RH. A few long lasting remissions were obtained.

Coffee drinking in the USA has remained much the same over the past 100 years but during that time there has been a vast increase in deaths from pancreatic cancer. It is suggested that the same thing is happening with pancreatic cancer as has happened with lung cancer and that this increase in pancreatic cancer has been the result of the combination of coffee drinking and the three-fold increase of immuno-suppressive polyunsaturated fats in the diet. There is a reference to support this concept. D.F. Brik of our National Cancer Institute had reported in 1981 that pancreatic cancer increased when corn oil was added to the diet of golden hamsters.

From an article published by the Townsend Letter, "Some Real Causes of heart Disease & Cancer", by Wayne Martin

Last updated 7 March 2007