Coffee is one of the world's most widely-enjoyed beverages. Flavor aside, scientists have recognized it as a complex blend of chemical compounds with potential health effects, both good and bad. Now, new research suggests that if you drink enough coffee, it might help you avoid certain kinds of cancer.
咖啡是世界上最受人喜爱的饮料之一。姑且不论它的味道，科学家们已经知道咖啡里含有多种对健康具有潜在影响的化学成分，其中有好的、也有坏的影响。一项新的研究指出，如果你饮用足够量的咖啡，可能有助于避免某些癌症。
Dr. Mia Hashibe of the University of Utah School of Medicine was interested in the link between coffee drinking and certain cancers of the head and neck. Researchers have looked into this before, but without reaching any firm conclusions.
犹他大学医学院的米亚·哈希贝医生对咖啡以及某些头部和颈部癌症之间的关连非常感兴趣。研究人员过去也曾经对此进行过探讨，可是没有提出任何肯定的结论。
"There were a few studies, but the findings were not consistent across the studies," she said, "so this finding from our current study was quite a surprise. We didn't really have any expectation of which direction it could go into."
她说：“有过一些研究，但并没有得出一致的结论。所以，我们目前研究中的发现，确实令人感到惊喜。我们事先并没有指望这项研究会朝哪个方向发展。”
To sort out the confusion, Hashibe and her colleagues used statistical techniques to, in effect, make one big study out of the previous smaller studies.
为了解决这些困惑，哈希贝医生和她的同事们利用统计学，综合过去各种小范围的研究结果，完成了一项大型研究。
So we combined data across nine individual studies, so we have a lot more power than previous studies that looked at this. And we included 4,000 cancer patients who have cancer of the oral cavity and pharynx [throat]. And then 9,000 controls, so controls are people who do not have cancer."
她说：“我们将过去9个不同研究的资料结合在一起，有了比过去更大的能力来进行探讨。我们募集了4千名患有口腔和喉头癌的病人，还有一个9千人的控制组，也就是没有癌症的人。”
Those studies – in Europe and the United States – found that people who drank a lot of coffee were less likely to develop cancers of the mouth and throat.
分别在欧洲和美国进行的研究发现，饮用大量咖啡的人罹患口腔和喉头癌的风险较低。
"We saw a protective effect for drinking more than 4 cups of coffee per day," Hashibe said. "This was the 40 percent decrease in risk. We did not observe an association for drinking three cups or less per day."
哈希贝医生说：“我们发现每天喝4杯以上的咖啡，会产生预防效果，将风险降低百分之40。我们没有在每天喝3杯或不到3杯咖啡的人身上看到这种效果。”
In an interview via Skype, Mia Hashibe said there was a weak link between cancer risk and drinking decaffeinated coffee, but it wasn't statistically significant. And she and her colleagues found no evidence that drinking tea provided the same protection as drinking coffee. Their research is published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.
哈希贝医生指出，喝无咖啡因咖啡的效果比较小，不过差别不大。另外，他们并没有发现任何证据，证明喝茶也有同样效果。
Hashibe says it is not clear how coffee might protect drinkers from certain cancers.
哈希贝说，至于咖啡如何能够保护饮用的人不患某些癌症，还不清楚。
"There are a few chemicals that are known to be antioxidants in coffee. So we are thinking perhaps those compounds are playing some sort of protective role against several cancers."
“我们已经知道，咖啡里有一些抗氧化的化学成分。因此我们想，也许是这些物质对预防某些癌症发挥了作用。”
If those compounds can be isolated, maybe someday you'll be able to take an anti-cancer pill, but for us coffee lovers, the answer may just be another refill.
如果这些物质能够被分离出来，也许有一天，我们就能有治疗癌症的药可用了。但是对咖啡爱好者来说，答案是再来一杯咖啡。 |