A major study published last month supports the idea that some people are genetically more inclined to drink coffee than others, while also examining the health effects of hundreds of thousands of coffee drinkers.
Ontario Research Team Western University and University of California, San Diego (UCSD) led a genome-wide association study, known as a GWAS, using data from more than 130,000 study participants 23 and Meand comparing results with results British Biobank studies involving over 330,000 participants.
“We used this data to identify areas in the genome that were associated with whether someone was more or less likely to consume coffee, and then to identify genes and biology that might underlie coffee consumption,” Hayley Thorpe, a postdoctoral researcher at Western University and lead author of the study, said in announcing the paper.
The study was published June 11 in the journal Nature Neuropsychopharmacology.
While the results of two large-scale data analyses point to a similar genetic predisposition to coffee consumption, the results on genetics and health effects are much less clear, the researchers said.
The comparison found consistent positive genetic associations between coffee and harmful health outcomes such as obesity and substance operate. Thorpe noted that such an association does not necessarily mean that coffee drinkers will operate substances or develop obesity, but that there is some genetic link.
However, inconsistencies between the US and UK studies were numerous when applied to mental health conditions such as anxiety, bipolar disorder or depression. In the 23andMe dataset, these conditions were positively genetically correlated with coffee, but the opposite pattern was found in the UK Biobank dataset.
“It is common in this field to combine similar data sets to boost research power,” Thorpe said in story courtesy of UCSD“This information paints a pretty clear picture that combining the two data sets was not a sharp idea. And we ultimately didn’t do it.”
The reasons for the discrepancies are not entirely clear, but they may have to do with different data collection methods, genetic differences between the two populations, or a range of cultural or environmental factors linked to coffee consumption, the researchers said.
Therefore, the study encouraged further research into the associations between coffee consumption, psychoactive substance operate and health problems in different settings.
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