A new study suggests that habitual coffee drinking was not linked with an increased risk of cardiac arrhythmias.

An adjusted analysis in the study, including over 300,000 individuals, noted that every additional cup of coffee intake was tied to a 3% decreased risk of incident arrhythmia. Genetic differences that affect caffeine metabolism did not seem to have a significant impact on the odds of arrhythmias, noted the study published in JAMA Internal Medicine.

Researchers assessed data from the UK Biobank, focusing on longitudinal data collected from 2006 through 2018 from 386,258 individuals without a previous diagnosis of arrhythmia. Participants provided information about their coffee consumption, and were segregated into eight categories based on daily coffee intake: 0, <1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 or more cups per day. During an average follow-up period of 4.5 years, 16,979 subjects developed incident arrhythmia. The reduced risk with every cup of coffee was found to be similar for atrial fibrillation (hazard ratio, 0.97) and supraventricular tachycardia (HR, 0.96), after the researchers adjusted for demographic characteristics, comorbid conditions, and lifestyle habits… (Medscape)