Drinking coffee and other caffeinated beverages can alter the levels of female hormone estrogen in young women but the effect differs according to their race.
A new study of over 250 women between the ages of 18 to 44 showed that Asian women who drank 2 cups of coffee (200 mg caffeine) per day had higher estrogen levels compared to women who consumed less caffeine.
The effect was found to be the opposite for Caucasian women. White women who consumed the same amount of caffeine per day as their Asian counterparts had lower estrogen levels than women who consumed less caffeine.
In addition, African-American women who consumed 200 mg of caffeine also had higher levels of estrogen but the elevation was not enough to be considered statistically significant for the number of women studied, says the report published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
The estrogen changes caused by consuming the studied amount of caffeine were not high enough to pose a risk to the health and fertility of women of child-bearing age, wrote the researchers whose study didn't include older women.
“For women of reproductive age, drinking coffee will not alter their hormonal function in a clinically significant way,” said Enrique Schisterman of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).
While the findings suggested that caffeine intake should not cause any worry among young and healthy women, scientists believe that further investigations are needed to study long term effects of caffeinated drinks on women especially after menopause.
