Washington DC - For most drinkers, tea and particularly coffee are consumed as stimulants or as part of socializing, morning jolts to open bleary eyes, or sipped around tables during conversations with family and friends.

But tea and coffee could have other health benefits, going by analysis published in CANCER, an American Cancer Society/Wiley journal, in which researchers point to data suggesting drinkers are less likely to develop cancers of the neck and head than those who abstain.

According to the team, people who drank more than 4 cups of caffeinated coffee a day "had 17% lower odds of having head and neck cancer overall, 30% lower odds of having cancer of the oral cavity, and 22% lower odds of having throat cancer."

Led by scientists and doctors at the University of Utah, the investigators compiled information from 14 older studies covering around 9,500 head and neck cancer patients and almost 16,000 cancer-free people.

"Drinking 3–4 cups of caffeinated coffee was linked with a 41% lower risk of having hypopharyngeal cancer," the team said, adding that even decaf "was associated with 25% lower odds of oral cavity cancer."

"While there has been prior research on coffee and tea consumption and reduced risk of cancer, this study highlighted their varying effects with different sub-sites of head and neck cancer, including the observation that even decaffeinated coffee had some positive impact," said Yuan-Chin Amy Lee of the University of Utah School of Medicine.

The findings are the latest to suggest possible health benefits from drinking coffee after scientists at Soochow University in China last year published research suggesting moderate intake could help prevent diabetes.

In 2023, a University of Verona team published research suggesting a link between coffee drinking and slower cognitive decline – a paper that, in turn, followed similar findings published in Australia and the US in 2021.