Colon¹ cancer patients who were heavy coffee drinkers had a far lower risk of dying or having their cancer return than those who did not drink coffee, with significant benefits starting at two to three cups a day, a new study found. Patients who drank four cups of caffeinated coffee or more a day had half the rate of recurrence² or death than noncoffee drinkers.

一项新研究发现，与不喝咖啡的结肠癌患者相比，大量饮用咖啡的患者癌症复发或死亡的风险较低，而且从每天饮用咖啡两到三杯开始这种效益就十分显著。每天至少饮用四杯含咖啡因咖啡的患者的癌症复发或死亡率只有不喝咖啡者的一半。

But, the researchers caution, cancer patients should not start ordering extra tall coffees. The study, the first to report such findings, does not prove a cause-and-effect relationship between coffee drinking and a lower risk of colon cancer recurrence. As other experts note, there may be differences between heavy coffee drinkers and abstainers that the research was not able to account for.

不过，研究人员警告说，癌症患者不应因此就开始点超大杯的咖啡。该研究是对此类发现的首次报道，但未能证明饮用咖啡与较低的结肠癌复发风险之间的因果关系。正如其他专家所指出的那样，在大量饮用咖啡者与不喝咖啡者之间可能存在着该研究没有考虑到的差异。

In recent years, many studies have pointed³ to coffee's health benefits, suggesting coffee may protect against Type 2 diabetes⁴, reduce overall deaths and perhaps even help protect against dementia. Other studies have suggested coffee may reduce the risks of certain cancers, including colon cancer. The benefits are generally attributed to coffee's antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties.

近年来，许多研究都指出咖啡具有健康效益，提出咖啡或可预防2型糖尿病，降低总体死亡率，甚至可能有助于防止痴呆症的发生。还有其它研究表明，咖啡可能会降低包括结肠癌在内的某些癌症的风险。这些优点通常都被归因于咖啡的抗氧化和抗炎特性。

But as with many studies about diet, proving a link between coffee consumption and protection against cancer recurrence is difficult.

然而，关于饮食的研究虽多，要证实饮用咖啡与预防癌症复发之间的关联却十分困难。

"Think about it: People who drink a lot of coffee tend to be high stress, high pressure, intense and compulsive," said Dr. Alfred Neugut, a professor of cancer research, medicine and epidemiology at Columbia University and a director of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital's Cancer Prevention Center. "If they have cancer, they're going to be more obsessive⁵ about following all the rules and doing all the things they're supposed to do. So it may be that coffee itself is playing a physiological⁶ role, but it may also be a surrogate marker for you being a compulsive health-conscious good behaver."

"想想看：大量喝咖啡的人往往压力比较大、容易紧张或有强迫倾向，"美国哥伦比亚大学的癌症研究、医学和流行病学教授，纽约长老会医院癌症防治中心的主任艾尔弗雷德·纽各特博士说。"如果他们患了癌症，肯定会更严格地遵循所有的规则，去做所有他们应该做的事情。因此，或许确实是咖啡本身发挥了什么生理作用，但也有可能爱喝咖啡只是特别注重健康行为的人们的一个替代性标识。"

Dr. Charles S. Fuchs, the director of the Gastrointestinal Cancer Center at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, who led the research, acknowledged the limitations of his study and called for interventional⁷ studies to replicate⁸ and confirm the findings.

该研究的负责人，波士顿市丹娜法伯癌症研究院胃肠道癌症中心的查尔斯·S·富克斯博士承认自己的研究存在局限性，并呼吁进行干预性研究以重现和证实这些结果。

"No one has ever done this before in colon cancer patients. It does require confirmation," he said. Patients should not start drinking coffee based on this study, but, "If you're a coffee drinker and enjoy your coffee, stick with it," he said. "If a patient says, 'Well I hate coffee,' I'd say there are other things you can do, like avoid obesity⁹, exercise regularly and follow a balanced diet."

他说："此前尚无人在结肠癌患者中进行过这样的研究。它确实需要经过确认。"富克斯博士还说，患者不宜因为这项研究就开始饮用咖啡，但是，"如果你本身就喝咖啡而且喜欢喝，不妨保持下去。"如果有患者说：'我讨厌咖啡'，那我就会回答：还有很多其它的事情可以做，比方说避免肥胖、经常锻炼、均衡饮食等等。"

The study, published Monday in The Journal of Clinical Oncology, followed 953 patients with Stage 3 colon cancer who had been treated with surgery and chemotherapy.

这项研究发表在8月17日的《临床肿瘤学杂志》上，共计随访了953名曾接受手术和化疗的3期结肠癌患者。