- A new study finds that people who metabolize caffeine slowly are three times more likely to develop kidney dysfunction.
- Other research has suggested that coffee promotes health, including kidney health.
- The slow metabolism, says the new study, is the result of a gene variant present in half the population at large. They propose that this may account for the conflicting conclusions of previous studies.
While some research has linked the consumption of coffee to kidney damage, other research has
It also finds that for some people, coffee can indeed be damaging to one’s kidneys.
The new study finds that the presence of a particular gene variant can result in coffee being three times more likely to cause kidney dysfunction.
The researchers say it is all about the speed at which a person metabolizes caffeine. In the study, about half of the participants had the rs762551 variant of the CYP1A2 gene, a variant that caused them to metabolize caffeine more slowly. This group was determined to be at a higher risk of kidney damage.
The authors say that this is about the same percentage of slow caffeine metabolizers in the general population.
The study assessed kidney health by tracking three accepted markers of kidney dysfunction:
The study is published in
The observational study spanned about 16 years. It involved a population of 1,180 participants ages 18 to 45 years, with each regularly being assessed over a 7.5-year follow-up period. All participants had untreated stage 1 hypertension and had been recruited as part of the separate
Dr. Sara Mahdavi, was the lead author of the study as a researcher with the Department of…
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