Nation IN BRIEF : ILLINOIS : Coffee Tied to Fewer Suicides by Women

Women who drink caffeinated coffee are less likely to commit suicide than those who do not, suggests a study in the Archives of Internal Medicine, published in Chicago by the American Medical Assn. Its author, Dr. Ichiro Kawachi of Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, says the results may not be significant because doctors might have told depressed patients not to drink coffee, a factor that wasn’t studied. The study of 86,626 female nurses ages 30 to 59 from 1980 to 1990 found 11 suicides among those who drank two to three cups of caffeinated coffee a day, compared to 21 cases among those who said they almost never drank coffee.