Coffee for heart patients: Drinking caffeinated coffee may help protect against recurrent atrial fibrillation, challenging long-standing advice to avoid it, according to a randomised clinical trial published in JAMA and presented at the American Heart Association meeting.
The Does Eliminating Coffee Avoid Fibrillation (DECAF) study enrolled 200 older adults in the US, Canada and Australia with persistent atrial fibrillation who had been coffee drinkers in the past five years.
Participants were randomly assigned either to cut caffeine or to consume at least one cup of coffee daily for six months, with intake self-reported during video check-ins. Heart rhythm was tracked using office electrocardiograms and wearable monitors.
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Patients assigned to coffee had fewer recurrences of irregular rhythm than those who abstained and went longer before a first relapse. Overall, coffee drinkers were about 17% less likely to have atrial fibrillation recur during the trial. Investigators led by Gregory Marcus of the University of California, San Francisco, said the findings suggest caffeinated coffee may offer a protective effect against A-fib recurrence.
The study has limits: caffeine from non-coffee sources wasn’t assessed, and differences in diet and exercise weren’t systematically tracked. Outside experts urged moderation rather than wholesale endorsement. “This shows you can have a cup of coffee in the morning and be OK if you have A-fib,” said Johanna Contreras, a cardiologist at Mount Sinai, while stopping short of calling coffee protective.
More than 10 million people in the US live with atrial fibrillation, which can lead to palpitations, heart failure, blood clots and stroke; many have been told to avoid caffeine.
