Coffee for the sick kidney
Christiane Fux studied journalism and psychology in Hamburg. The experienced medical editor has been writing magazine articles, news and factual texts on all conceivable health topics since 2001. In addition to her work for, Christiane Fux is also active in prose. Her first crime novel was published in 2012, and she also writes, designs and publishes her own crime plays.
More posts by Christiane Fux All content is checked by medical journalists.People with chronic kidney disease often die prematurely. A simple strategy can significantly improve your life expectancy: drink coffee.
When the kidneys do not work properly, it has serious consequences for the whole body. Because the kidneys are not only detoxification and drainage organs, they also influence central processes such as blood pressure. Regular blood washing by dialysis is also vital in the case of kidney failure, but it cannot completely replace a functioning kidney. That shortens life expectancy.
Live longer thanks to coffee?
Researcher around Dr. Miguel Bigotte Vieira from the Centro Hospitaler Lisboa Norte investigated to what extent coffee consumption could have a positive influence on the progression of kidney disease.
"Coffee has an antioxidant effect - earlier studies have shown that", Bigotte Vieira says in an interview with These have shown, among other things, that higher coffee consumption increases life expectancy in the average population. But does this also apply to kidney patients?
The scientists evaluated data from 2328 patients with kidney failure and compared their chances of survival with their respective coffee consumption. "We found a dose-dependent effect of coffee consumption on mortality," explains Bigotte Vieira. The fate of the patients was followed for an average of 53 months, 752 of them died during this time.
Chances of survival increase by almost a quarter
Compared to participants who drank a maximum of a third of a cup of coffee per day, the chances of survival of those who consumed more coffee were significantly greater. A third to one cup of coffee a day has already increased it by twelve percent, with one or two cups it rose by 22 percent.
Those who drank more than two cups of coffee a day even had a 24 percent lower risk of dying during the observation period. One cup of coffee corresponded to about 230 ml with a total caffeine content of 95 mg.
This effect was independent of social factors such as age, gender, origin, income and education. But health factors such as the kidney values albumin and creatines, blood pressure, obesity and smoking habits did not influence him. Neither are eating habits such as the consumption of carbohydrates, polyunsaturated fats and fiber, or alcohol consumption.
Recommendation: more coffee!
"Recommending to patients with chronic kidney failure to drink more coffee could reduce their mortality," says Bigotte Vieira. That could be a simple, clinically advantageous, and inexpensive option. However, it is only an observational study. Whether coffee consumption actually increased the patient's chances of survival cannot be proven with certainty. Further investigations are necessary for this.
Unknown sick
Doctors speak of chronic kidney failure when the kidney function has dropped to less than 60 percent. Experts estimate that around two million people nationwide are affected.
Since the disease is hardly noticeable at an early stage, it is known to only one in four people affected, according to the study on adult health in Germany (DEGS1). Renal insufficiency is age-dependent: while kidney damage occurs extremely rarely in people under 50, one in eight of the 70 to 79 year olds is already ill.
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