Three cups of coffee a day 'can cut the risk of ovarian cancer'

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Three cups of coffee a day can help prevent ovarian cancer, research suggests.

A study found that caffeine reduces the risk of the disease by a fifth. The risk is even less for women who do not take the Pill or do not use hormone replacement therapy.

Researchers in the U.S. investigated the links between lifestyle and health of 122,000 American nurses.

As part of the study, which ran from 1976 to 2004, Dr Shelley Tworoger of Harvard Medical School compared the diets of 80,000 of these women with the incidence of ovarian cancer.

During this time 737 of the women developed ovarian cancer.

Women who had at least three cups of coffee a day were 20 per cent less likely to develop ovarian cancer than those who drank none.

Among women who had never taken the Pill, coffee drinking cut the risk of ovarian cancer by 35 per cent. And for those who had not had hormone replacement therapy, the risk was 43 per cent less.

"We observed a significant inverse trend of ovarian cancer risk with caffeine intake," Dr Tworoger wrote in the American medical journal Cancer.

The reasons why caffeine protects against ovarian cancer is not clear and further studies will be carried out, added Dr Tworoger.

Josephine Querido, of Cancer Research UK, said: "The jury is still out as to whether or not caffeine affects the risk of ovarian cancer because evidence from previous studies looking at this link has been inconsistent."

The benefits and risks of drinking coffee continue to be the subject of much debate.

Some studies have shown caffeine can reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, gallstones, diabetes and gout.

Others have found that excessive amounts of coffee cause anxiety, sleeplessness and palpitations.

A study published yesterday found that coffee can increase the risk of miscarriages.