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Coffee and subarachnoid haemorrhage

Department of Neurology, University of Washington, Harborview Medical Center, 325 Ninth Avenue, Seattle, Washington 98104–2420, USA

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr W T Longstreth;
wl@u.washington.edu

Keywords: subarachnoid haemorrhage; risk factors; hypertension; coffee; case-control study

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

You may be making enemies, especially in Seattle, if you conclude from the study of Isaksen et al that coffee is a risk factor for subarachnoid haemorrhage (this issue, pp 185-7).¹ Love of java necessitates a critical evaluation. Are we dealing with coincidence, confounding, or causation? In a case-control study, these investigators drew subjects from a population based health survey of inhabitants in the municipality of Tromsø, Norway. At variable times before the bleeding (maximum 186 months) participants had been evaluated. The investigators found that cigarette smoking and high systolic blood pressure increased risk, as have others.² The trend was for high cholesterol to reduce risk but not significantly, perhaps reflecting the small number of participants (n = 26). Drinking six or more cups of coffee per day yielded an odds ratio of 3.86 even after controlling for these other factors in multivariable analyses.

Is the association a . . . [Full text of this article]