A jolt to decaf drinkers

Answering the "decaf or regular" question has become more problematic.

Caffeine can give some people the jitters, keeping them awake or speeding up their heart rate, but decaffeinated coffee, researchers have found, may be bad for your heart.

Java without the jolt increases the levels of so-called bad cholesterol in the bloodstream and reduces levels of good cholesterol, researchers reported last week at a meeting of the American Heart Assn. in Dallas. Among other research presented were studies on growing blood vessels in labs and performing angioplasty through an opening in the wrist.

Dr. H. Robert Superko, who presented the study on decaffeinated coffee, said the problem might have less to do with whether caffeine is present than with the nature of the beans used to make the coffee.

The decaffeination process removes flavonoids and other ingredients that give coffee its flavor. Manufacturers of decaf overcome this problem by replacing the normal Arabica coffee species with beans from the robusta species, which has higher concentrations of flavoring agents, said Superko, who is director of the Fuqua Heart Center in Atlanta, but who did the research while a faculty member at Stanford University.

Unfortunately, robusta also has higher levels of fats, which can alter cholesterol concentrations in the bloodstream.

For the government-sponsored research, Superko enrolled 187 people in a three-month study and randomly assigned them to one of three groups: those who drank three to six cups of regular coffee daily, those who drank three to six cups of decaf and those who drank no coffee.

Each coffee drinker in the study was given a coffeemaker, premeasured bags of coffee and precise instructions on how to prepare the coffee. All drank the coffee black.

After three months, those drinking the decaf had lipid levels in their blood that were 8% to 18% above normal; people in the regular-coffee and no-coffee groups had normal lipid levels. The lipids are precursors of low-density lipoprotein, bad cholesterol.

Though provocative, the differences were small. "I don't think there's a health threat" associated with either type of coffee, Superko said.

Dr. Donald Lavan, a cardiologist at the University of Pennsylvania and a spokesman for the heart association, agreed. "That's interesting, but it would not affect my recommendations to patients," he said.