Larsson SC et al. – Findings from this meta–analysis indicate that moderate coffee consumption may be weakly inversely associated with risk of stroke.

• Authors conducted a meta–analysis of prospective studies to quantitatively assess the association between coffee consumption and stroke risk
• Pertinent studies were identified by searching PubMed and Embase from January 1966 through May 2011 and by reviewing the reference lists of retrieved articles
• Prospective studies in which investigators reported relative risks of stroke for 3 or more categories of coffee consumption were eligible
• Results from individual studies were pooled using a random–effects model

• 11 prospective studies, with 10,003 cases of stroke and 479,689 participants, met the inclusion criteria
• There was some evidence of a nonlinear association between coffee consumption and risk of stroke (P for nonlinearity = 0.005)
• Compared with no coffee consumption, the relative risks of stroke were 0.86 (95% confidence interval (95% CI): 0.78, 0.94) for 2 cups of coffee per day, 0.83 (95% CI: 0.74, 0.92) for 3–4 cups/day, 0.87 (95% CI: 0.77, 0.97) for 6 cups/day, and 0.93 (95% CI: 0.79, 1.08) for 8 cups/day
• There was marginal between–study heterogeneity among study–specific trends (I2 = 12% and I2 = 20% for the first and second spline transformations, respectively)