Coffee can prove to be a boon in the medical world by helping prevent the most common type of liver cancer.
A study which included more than 90,000 Japanese found people who drank coffee daily or nearly every day had half the liver cancer risk of those who never drank coffee.
According to the estimates of the American Cancer Society 18,920 new cases of liver cancer were diagnosed in the US last year and some 14,270 people died of the illness.
The causes include hepatitis, cirrhosis, excess alcohol consumption and diseases causing chronic inflammation of the liver.
A research team led by Monami Inoue of the National Cancer Center in Tokyo analysed a 10-year public health study to determine coffee use by people diagnosed with liver cancer and people who did not have cancer found that likely occurrence of the disease in people who never or almost never drank coffee was 547.2 cases per 100,000 over 10 years.
But for those who drank coffee daily the risk was 214.6 cases per 100,000, the researchers report in this week's issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
It was found that the protective effect occurred in people who drank one to two cups of coffee a day and increased at three to four cups.
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