Coffee associated with lower stroke risk

Study finds java drinkers 71 percent as likely to have had stroke as nondrinkers

SAN ANTONIO — People who drink coffee are nearly one-third less likely than nondrinkers to develop a stroke, a new study suggests. It didn’t matter if the brew was drip grind, decaffeinated or even lowly instant.

Epidemiologist Yangmei Li of the University of Cambridge in England and her colleagues analyzed the health records of more than 20,000 European men and women between the ages of 39 and 79 who were free of stroke history, heart disease and cancer when they provided lifestyle information for a health study in the mid-1990s.