This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Related letter  • Related article  • Similar articles in this journal  Topic Collections  • Liver/ Biliary Tract/ Pancreatic Diseases  • Alert me on articles by topic

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

In reply

We thank Vinson for his interest in our work and for his endorsement of the conclusion that our data support the existence of a protective effect of some coffee ingredient against chronic liver disease, especially alcohol-induced cirrhosis. Wishing to avoid going beyond our evidence, we minimized speculations about mechanisms. We stated our opinion that the issue of whether caffeine or some other coffee ingredient was involved remains unresolved in our data and the work of others. Similarly unresolved is the basis of putative protection by coffee against suicide,^1-2 Parkinson disease,³ diabetes mellitus,⁴ and pancreatitis.⁵ Because oxidative stress might be involved in mechanisms of hepatocyte damage from noxious agents, Vinson's suggestion of protection by phenolic compounds in coffee with antioxidant properties has plausibility. We most definitely concur with Vinson's statement of the need for more coffee research; both laboratory work and clinical research might be fruitful.

AUTHOR INFORMATION
Correspondence: Dr Klatsky, . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Arthur L. Klatsky, MD; Cynthia Morton, MD; Natalia Udaltsova, PhD; Gary D. Friedman, MD

RELATED LETTER

Coffee and Cirrhosis: Active Ingredients?
Joe A. Vinson
Arch Intern Med. 2006;166(21):2404-2405.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT  

RELATED ARTICLE

A prospective study of coffee drinking and suicide in women
I. Kawachi, W. C. Willett, G. A. Colditz, M. J. Stampfer, and F. E. Speizer
Arch Intern Med. 1996;156(5):521-525.
ABSTRACT