Metabolites, Nutrients, and Lifestyle Factors in Relation to Coffee Consumption: An Environment-Wide Association Study

Overview

Elhadad and colleagues used an environment-wide association study design to test 245 metabolites, nutrients, and lifestyle factors against regular coffee and caffeinated-beverage consumption in NHANES III. This is lane a4 exposure and biomonitoring evidence, not a coffee occurrence paper. The replicated biomarker associations included positive associations between regular coffee consumption and serum lead concentration, and between regular coffee consumption and urinary cadmium.

Key numbers

• Study population: 17,752 NHANES III adults after zero-weight exclusions.
• Discovery/replication structure: phase 1 discovery set n = 8825; phase 2 replication set n = 8927.
• Factors screened: 245 metabolites, nutrients, and lifestyle factors.
• Daily coffee consumption in Table 1: 4,111 of 8,292 male participants consumed at least one cup/day, with mean consumption 72.4 cups per month; 4,766 of 9,460 female participants consumed at least one cup/day, with mean consumption 62.0 cups per month.
• Table 2 replicated association for serum lead concentration: No. 7866, coefficient 8.25, SE 1.71, p-value 4.23 × 10−4.
• Table 2 replicated association for urinary cadmium: No. 7783, coefficient 4.04, SE 1.52, p-value 2.11 × 10−2.
• Table 3 caffeinated-beverage association for serum lead concentration: coefficient 8.09, SE 1.92, p-value 1.20 × 10−3.
• Table 3 caffeinated-beverage association for urinary cadmium: coefficient 4.99, SE 1.15, p-value 9.66 × 10−4.
• Table 3 soft-drink columns show no coefficient for serum lead concentration or urinary cadmium, meaning those coffee-replicated factors failed replication for soft-drink consumption under the table’s dash convention.
• Abstract summary: regular coffee consumption was positively associated with active and passive smoking, serum lead and urinary cadmium concentrations, dietary potassium and magnesium intake, and aspirin intake.
• Discussion interpretation: the authors state that the positive association between regular coffee consumption and serum lead or urinary cadmium concentrations “potentially reflects coffee contamination with heavy metals,” but the paper does not measure metals in coffee.

Methods (brief)

The study used NHANES III, a US cross-sectional survey with multistage stratified, clustered probability sampling. Regular coffee, tea, and soda consumption were assessed by food-frequency questionnaire in times per month; non-caffeinated coffee, tea, and soda were infrequent, so the analysis focused on caffeinated beverages. The authors screened 245 factors using phase 1 NHANES III, applied survey-weighted linear regression and Benjamini-Hochberg FDR control, and then tested replication in phase 2. Continuous factors were Z-score standardized. The extracted text does not print laboratory methods for serum lead or urinary cadmium measurement, only the NHANES III biomarker variables and association models.

Implications

Microbiome: No microbiome endpoints.

Related evidence

• Lead
• Cadmium

Update history

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