A new study has found that long-term coffee consumption may help reduce risk for endometrial cancer. Coffee is emerging as a protective agent in cancers that are linked to obesity, estrogen and insulin, said Edward Giovannucci, M.D., Sc.D., professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. "Coffee has already been shown to be protective against diabetes due to its effect on insulin," said Giovannucci, a senior researcher on the study. "So we hypothesized that we'd see a reduction in some cancers as well," he stated. Giovannucci, along with Youjin Je, a doctoral candidate in his lab, and colleagues observed cumulative coffee intake in relation to endometrial cancer in 67,470 women who enrolled in the Nurses' Health Study. During the course of 26 years of follow-up, researchers documented 672 cases of endometrial cancer. Drinking more than four cups of coffee per day was linked with a 25 per cent reduced risk for endometrial cancer. Drinking between two and three cups per day was linked with a 7 per cent reduced risk. A similar link was seen in decaffeinated coffee, where drinking more than two cups per day was linked with a 22 per cent reduced risk for endometrial cancer. The study appeared in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.