Coffee Beans (photo by Rick Tango)

Having a cup or two of coffee on a morning following a 3-day weekend may provide a needed lift, but if you want to reduce your risk of gout you may want to have a couple more that day. That was the conclusion of a study conducted by Canadian researches.

Conventional wisdom had held that people suffering from gout should avoid drinking coffee, but Dr. Hyon Choi of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, and colleagues at Harvard Medical School in Boston decided to test that hypothesis. The study is based on a survey of about 50,000 men aged 40 to 75 with no history of gout. Gout is a painful joint condition affilcting 6 million Americans, with men being disproportionately effected.

Over the 12 years of the study, during which 757 men developed gout, the risk was lower for those who drank more coffee, Choi reported in the journal Arthritis & Rheumatism. Those who were drinking four to five cups of coffee had a 40% lower rate of gout. Drinking six or more cups resulted in a 50% to 60% reduction

To read a report on the study by Reuters posted on Yahoo! News go to: Coffee may cut risk of gout, study finds