Reassessing the Impact of Coffee Consumption on Liver Disease: Insights from a Large-Scale Cohort Study with IPTW Adjustment.

ABSTRACT

Coffee consumption is globally widespread and has become a lifestyle habit. This study investigated coffee consumption and liver-related survival in a large cohort of 455,870 individuals with UK biobank, categorized into without steatosis, metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD), and MASLD and increased alcohol intake (MetALD). Inverse probability of treatment weighting (IPTW) adjusted for confounding variables was used, followed by Kaplan-Meier analysis. Moderate coffee consumption (1-2 cups per day) was associated with lower all-cause mortality across the entire cohort, without the steatosis, MASLD (p < 0.0001), and MetALD cohorts (p = 0.0047 for pre-IPTW, p = 0.027 for post-IPTW). Before IPTW adjustment, consuming one or more cups of coffee per day appeared to significantly reduce liver-related mortality in the overall (p = 0.015) and MASLD cohorts (p = 0.011). However, post-IPTW application, no significant differences in liver-related mortality were observed between the coffee intake groups (p = 0.778, 0.319, 0.564, 0.238 for each group). While increased coffee consumption initially seemed to reduce liver-related mortality, after IPTW adjustment, only all-cause mortality significantly decreased (p < 0.0001 and p = 0.027). These findings suggest that previous studies might have overestimated the favorable effect of coffee intake on chronic liver disease due to confounding factors.