Drinking coffee and tea during pregnancy. Does it affect cancer risk?

CANCER RISK

This is, indeed, what a recent article in Medscape Medical News cautiously suggested.1 An expert out of the Atlanta office of the American Cancer Society quoted in the article noted that, though evolving evidence appears encouraging, it is not enough yet to result in formal dietary recommendations, at least not yet. A weak and inconsistent benefit for coffee has been reported for primarily breast and ovarian cancers, and more persuasive evidence for liver, endometrial, and colorectal cancers. And a recent meta-analysis suggested similar benefits for coffee and tea when it comes to head and neck cancers. The authors of this study, involving 9500 cancer cases and almost 16,000 controls from 14 different studies, reported that with four or more cups of caffeinated coffee, the risk of head and neck cancers was significantly reduced. Daily coffee consumption alone reduced oropharyngeal, hypopharyngeal, and oral cavity cancers.

Interestingly, caffeine in coffee and tea does, however, not appear to be the primary mediator for cancer risk. In a colorectal cancer study, for example, even decaffeinated coffee reduced colorectal cancers by 18%, which was even more than caffeinated coffee achieved. As a consequence, the thinking now is that polyphenols – bioactive compounds in caffeinated coffee, decaffeinated coffee, and tea may be the responsible parties. They have demonstrated antioxidative and anticancer properties in cancer cell lines. There was, however, one exception, and that was laryngeal cancer, which was found to be increased among tea drinkers, with some possible explanations offered but no hard evidence on why that may be the case.

WHAT DOES ALL OF THIS MEAN FOR PREGNANCY?

Maternal tea and coffee consumption during pregnancy in several (rather poor-quality studies) has in the past been associated with premature birth, low birth weight, both obviously associated with the offspring’s neurological development. As it, however, now turns out according to a recently published Chinese study in Scientific Reports,2 found the opposite, namely a positive association between maternal tea consumption during pregnancy and children’s cognitive development. 

Children of mothers with a continuous tea drinking pattern throughout pregnancy had higher cognition, fine motor, and gross motor scores than children of mothers who drank tea only in the 1st trimester. Tea-drinking in the second and third trimesters was more strongly associated with outcomes than tea-drinking in the 1st trimester. Second and third trimesters, therefore, appear to be key periods for recommended maternal tea consumption. 

No significant association in either good or bad was found with maternal coffee consumption. It, thus, appears that there is little reason to recommend to pregnant women to completely abstain from coffee and tea during pregnancy, as is practice in the U.S. (and many other countries) to this day. And tea may, indeed, offer a positive outcome effect. 

But the CHR has felt this way for quite some time because we always argued that, if coffee, indeed, cause significant adverse effects, we would have noticed them in countries with heavy coffee consumption (for example, Italy, France, and Austria) and heavy tea consumption (for example China, Japan, and Russia) a long time ago.

REFERENCES

1. Smith J. Medscape Medical News.

February 10, 2025. https://www.

medscape.com/viewarticle/coffee-and-

tea-linked-reduced-cancer-risk-cup-

murky-2025a10003ca

2. Ouyang et al., Scientific Reports

2025;15:8832