Decaf, But Not Total Coffee, Tied to Longer Survival After Colorectal Cancer in Landmark Multiethnic Study

For millions of people living with colorectal cancer, one of the most persistent questions after treatment ends is deceptively simple: does my morning coffee help or hurt? A new prospective analysis drawn from one of the most racially and ethnically diverse cancer cohorts ever assembled offers the most nuanced answer yet, and its findings complicate a narrative that has been hardening in the oncology literature for a decade. In the study, published in Cancer Causes and Control, researchers followed 1,098 individuals diagnosed with colorectal cancer in the Multiethnic Cohort Study and found that total coffee intake, taken across the whole sample, was not statistically associated with the risk of dying from any cause or from colorectal cancer itself. Yet buried beneath that null headline were striking signals: decaffeinated coffee was linked to a 29 percent lower risk of all-cause mortality among those who drank it, caffeine from any source was associated with a 22 percent lower risk of death overall and a remarkable 52 percent lower risk of colorectal cancer-specific death at the highest intake levels, and the protective patterns of caffeinated coffee appeared only within certain racial and ethnic groups rather than across the board.

The Multiethnic Cohort, established in 1993–1996 in Hawaii and Los Angeles, was designed precisely to overcome a weakness that has plagued nutritional epidemiology: study populations dominated by White, well-educated participants whose habits and biology may not generalize. Colorectal cancer is the third most common cancer worldwide and the second leading cause of cancer death in the United States, and the burden is unevenly distributed. Black men and women in the US experience roughly 40 percent and 24 percent higher colorectal cancer mortality than their White counterparts, while disaggregated data show elevated rates among Japanese and Native Hawaiian populations. At the same time, national dietary surveys show that coffee consumption itself varies sharply by group, with non-Hispanic White individuals averaging about 1.5 cups per day, Hispanic individuals about one cup, and Black individuals about half a cup. Any study that hopes to draw honest conclusions about coffee and cancer survival must therefore contend with the fact that who drinks coffee, how much, and in what form differs profoundly across communities.

The new analysis capitalized on the cohort’s structure. Participants completed a validated food frequency questionnaire at enrollment and again a decade later, between 2003 and 2008. The researchers identified 1,098 individuals who were free of colorectal cancer at baseline, were diagnosed with the disease before the follow-up survey, and survived long enough to complete that second questionnaire, which captured post-diagnosis intake of regular coffee, decaffeinated coffee, and cappuccino-style drinks across nine frequency categories ranging from never to four or more times daily. Mortality was tracked through linkage with SEER cancer registries, state vital records, and the National Death Index through December 31, 2019, yielding 628 deaths, of which 107 were attributable to colorectal cancer. The median time from diagnosis to the post-diagnosis survey was nearly five years, and the average follow-up after that survey exceeded ten years, giving the analysis unusual depth.

Methodologically, the team used multivariable Cox proportional hazards regression, the workhorse of survival analysis, to estimate hazard ratios adjusted for a carefully assembled battery of confounders. The fully adjusted models accounted for age, sex, race and ethnicity, body mass index, time from diagnosis to the dietary assessment, tumor site and SEER stage, educational attainment, marital status, smoking status, physical activity, a comorbidity index spanning conditions from diabetes to Parkinson’s disease, history of another cancer, alcohol intake, and omega-3 fatty acid consumption. A third model mutually adjusted caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee against each other to disentangle their independent effects. Sensitivity analyses excluding participants who died within one or two years of the survey, those with distant-stage disease, those who did not undergo surgical resection, and records with missing data all left the core results intact, addressing the ever-present specter of reverse causation, in which sicker patients simply drink less coffee.

The central result was a null that speaks volumes. Total and caffeinated coffee intake showed no statistically significant association with all-cause or colorectal cancer-specific mortality in the overall cohort, although the association for total coffee and all-cause mortality hovered at the edge of significance, with a hazard ratio of 0.92 per additional cup per day and a p-value of 0.057. Decaffeinated coffee, by contrast, was clearly associated with survival: each additional cup per day carried a hazard ratio of 0.82 for all-cause mortality, and participants drinking at least one cup daily had a 29 percent lower risk compared with non-drinkers. The finding persisted even after controlling for caffeinated coffee consumption, suggesting that compounds other than caffeine, or the behaviors of people who choose decaf, may be at work.

The caffeine analysis added a twist that cuts against a simple decaf story. When the researchers aggregated caffeine from every source, including coffee, black tea, green tea, regular soda, and diet soda, participants in the top quartile of intake had a 22 percent lower risk of all-cause mortality and a 52 percent lower risk of colorectal cancer-specific mortality compared with those in the bottom quartile. The authors suggest that measuring caffeine across all dietary sources may have captured a wider range of exposure than coffee alone, where the cohort’s relatively modest consumption levels, topping out well below the four or more cups per day examined in prior studies, may have limited the ability to detect an effect.

The stratified results are arguably the study’s most consequential contribution. Among White participants, who reported the highest coffee and caffeine intake in the cohort, both total and caffeinated coffee were associated with lower colorectal cancer-specific mortality, with hazard ratios of 0.48 and 0.45 per additional daily cup, and decaffeinated coffee was again linked to lower all-cause mortality. Among Native Hawaiian participants, total and caffeinated coffee were associated with lower all-cause mortality, with hazard ratios of 0.62 and 0.55 per cup per day, an observation never before reported for this group. No statistically significant associations emerged among Black, Japanese American, or Latino participants. Formal tests for interaction did not reach significance, meaning the differences between groups could reflect chance, but the pattern is biologically and culturally plausible. Coffee strength, preparation methods, and additives such as sugar and cream vary across cultures, and coffee interacts with diet-dependent gut microbiome compositions and insulin dynamics in ways that could differ across populations.

Mechanistically, the plausibility of a coffee-cancer survival link rests on a substantial experimental foundation. In vitro and animal studies have shown that coffee and its constituents are antiproliferative, pro-apoptotic, antioxidant, and anti-inflammatory, capable of slowing the division of cancer cells and promoting their self-destruction. Coffee consumption has also been shown to reshape the gut microbiome and improve insulin sensitivity, both of which are implicated in colorectal carcinogenesis and progression, since hyperinsulinemia fuels tumor growth and inflammation accelerates it. Caffeine specifically may act by enhancing insulin sensitivity and by exerting anti-inflammatory effects that inhibit carcinogenesis. Prior clinical studies lend support: among 953 patients with stage III colon cancer in the CALGB 89803 trial, two or more cups of coffee daily were associated with longer disease-free survival, and among 1,599 patients with stage I–III colorectal cancer in the Nurses’ Health Study and Health Professionals Follow-up Study, four or more cups daily were linked to lower cancer-specific and overall mortality. A 2024 Global Cancer Update Programme meta-analysis graded the evidence as limited-suggestive, and a Dutch study of 1,719 patients reported a U-shaped relationship with the lowest mortality at four cups per day.

The authors are candid about limitations. Coffee consumption in this cohort was modest, few participants drank at the extremes where earlier studies found effects, and the very high consumption seen in some prior cohorts may itself signal healthier, more resilient patients, a bias this more moderate sample partly avoids. Some racial and ethnic subgroups were small, survival bias is unavoidable in a design requiring participants to live long enough to complete a post-diagnosis survey, residual confounding cannot be excluded in any observational study, and the multiplicity of exposures and outcomes examined raises the possibility of chance findings. Coffee recurrence data were unavailable. Still, the study is the first to interrogate the coffee-survival question in a genuinely multiracial population, and its message to patients and clinicians is refreshingly grounded: coffee after a colorectal cancer diagnosis, whether caffeinated or not, does not appear to be harmful, decaffeinated coffee and caffeine may both be associated with survival advantages, and future research should focus less on coffee as a monolith and more on caffeine itself and on how dietary factors interact with the biology of diverse populations.

Subject of Research: Association of post-diagnosis coffee and caffeine intake with mortality among colorectal cancer patients in a racially diverse cohort

Article Title: Association of coffee intake with risk of all-cause and colorectal cancer-specific mortality among individuals with colorectal cancer in the Multiethnic Cohort Study

Article References: Benson, K. R. K., Tolstykh, I., Chan, J. M., Piawah, S., Wilkens, L. R., Park, S.-Y., Kenfield, S. A., Le Marchand, L., Haiman, C. A., Cheng, I., & Van Blarigan, E. L. (2026). Association of coffee intake with risk of all-cause and colorectal cancer-specific mortality among individuals with colorectal cancer in the Multiethnic Cohort Study. Cancer Causes & Control, 37(10), Article 157. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10552-026-02246-w

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s10552-026-02246-w

Keywords: colorectal cancer, coffee, caffeine, decaffeinated coffee, cancer survival, mortality, Multiethnic Cohort Study, nutritional epidemiology, cancer disparities, insulin sensitivity, gut microbiome, prospective cohort