Looking into data from the first federal National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey Epidemiologic Follow-up Study, the researchers found that those who drank caffeinated beverages often experienced lower risk of coronary vascular disease and heart mortality than those who did not consume as much of such beverages.

John Kassotis, MD, associate professor of medicine at SUNY Downstate, explained "The protection against death from heart disease in the elderly afforded by caffeine is likely due to caffeine's enhancement of blood pressure."

The seemingly protective effect also was found dose-responsive: the higher the caffeine intake, the stronger the protection against heart problems.

But the correlation was only found in participants who were not severely hypertensive. No protective effect was found among the patients who were younger than 65.   In addition, drinking caffeinated beverages was not associated with reduced risk of cerebrovascular disease mortality or death from stroke regardless of age.

The link between the heart mortality and caffeine intake does not seem to be a causal relationship, meaning that drinking caffeinated beverages does not necessarily provide any real protection although such a possibility can not be excluded either.   The protection may or may not be there, which need to be confirmed in future studies, a scientist affiliated with foodconsumer.org comments.

The findings were published in the Feb 2007 issue of The American Journal of Nutrition.
 

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