AI Study Supports Association of Increased Coffee Consumption With Decreased CVD Risk

MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Coffee being poured Coffee pot pouring cup of coffee.  copyright American Heart Association
Laura Stevens
University of Colorado
Aurora, CO

MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?

Response:
We started with asking ourselves how we could better predict cardiovascular and stroke outcomes.  In an ideal world, we would be able to predict cardiovascular disease (CVD) and stroke with 100% accuracy long before the occurrence of the event.  The challenge here is there are so many potential risk factors, and testing each one using traditional methods would be extremely time consuming, and possibly infeasible.

Therefore, we used artificial intelligence to find potential risk factors that could be important for risk of CVD and stroke.  The results of this analysis pointed to consumption of coffee cups per day and the number of times red meat was consumed per week as being potentially important predictors of CVD.

We then looked into these findings further using traditional statistical analyses to determine that increased coffee consumption and red meat consumption appeared to be associated with decreased risk of CVD.  The study initially used data from the Framingham Heart Study (FHS) original cohort.

The findings from this data were then tested using data from 2 independent studies, the Cardiovascular Heart Study (CHS) and the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study (ARIC), which both supported the association of increased coffee consumption with decreased CVD risk.

MedicalResearch.com: What readers take away from your report?

The 3 key findings would be:

  1. Machine learning may be an effective way to mine large clinical cohort data and identify new factors for predicting disease risk
  2. Current Risk Score models do not predict 100% accurately, suggesting there are as-yet unidentified risk factors
  3. Drinking coffee may be associated with decreased risk of stroke, heart failure, and coronary heart disease.

MedicalResearch.com: What recommendations do you have for future research as a result of this study?

Response: The presence of the association between CVD and coffee consumption in these 3 large studies may prompt further investigation into this association, particularly given the ubiquity of coffee consumption and coffee culture in today’s society.

We plan to continue validate these findings with other data in the Precision Medicine Platform (precision.heart.org), and we intend to use these initial findings and the same type of analysis to determine if compounds like caffeine may explain the reduction in risk (for example tea consumption vs. coffee consumption).  Additionally we plan to use the same type of analysis to find potential behaviors and habits around the associations found in this research. Ultimately, our key goals are to determine whether coffee consumption is a clinically useful part of CVD risk assessment and whether changing coffee or caffeine consumption may be a way of altering CVD risk.

MedicalResearch.com: Thank you for your contribution to the MedicalResearch.com community.

Citation:

Drinking coffee may be associated with reduced risk of heart failure and stroke
M2040 / 2040 – Coffee Intake Affects Heart Failure and Stroke Survival and is Significant in Predicting Heart Failure and Stroke Risk

Laura Stevens, Carsten Görg, David Kao, Univ of Colorado, Aurora, CO

http://www.abstractsonline.com/pp8/#!/4412/presentation/51231

 

 

Note: Content is Not intended as medical advice. Please consult your health care provider regarding your specific medical condition and questions.

 

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Last Updated on November 15, 2017 by Marie Benz MD FAAD