Way to enable an academic's coffee habit, researchers!

Two of the common props of the archetypal philosopher are alcohol and coffee. (Existentialism throws in berets and cigarettes.) New research from Kaiser Permanente Oakland suggests that the coffee might offset some of the alcohol's potential harm.

From the Oakland Tribune:

It seems that people who consumed large quantities of alcohol reduced their risk of being hospitalized or dying from cirrhosis because they were also heavy coffee drinkers, researchers at Kaiser Permanente Oakland suggest in a study published Monday.

``For heavy drinkers, the more coffee they drank, they less likely they were to get the diagnosis of cirrhosis,'' said Dr. Arthur Klatsky, investigator with Kaiser's Division of Research and lead author of the study.

Researchers followed more than 125,000 Northern Californian Kaiser members between 1978 and 1985. Participants, none who had liver disease at the outset, filled out a questionnaire that included their alcohol, coffee and tea-drinking habits.

By the end of 2001, 330 participants had been diagnosed with liver disease and of those 199 had alcohol-related cirrhosis.

Those who drank one cup of coffee per day were on average 20 percent less likely to have alcohol cirrhosis, despite heavy drinking. Drinking two to four cups of coffee reduced risk by 40 percent.

The Kaiser members who drank four or more cups of coffee per day cut their risk of developing liver cirrhosis by an astonishing 80 percent, according to the study, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Tea drinking didn't reduce risk of developing the liver disease, and those who developed cirrhosis for reasons other than heavy alcohol consumption saw no protective benefits from drinking coffee, researchers found.

It's unclear whether it's the caffeine or something else in coffee that protects the liver from alcohol-induced damage. The researchers did not ask participants whether they drank caffeinated or de-caffeinated coffee.

Barrista, make mine a venti!