Coffee and Tea Intake Can Save Your Life (Health Report)

Have a heavy daily intake of coffee and hot tea?

If so, you might be staving off a deadly drug-resistant staph infection, according to new research.

Those who drink either beverage - compared to those that don't - are about 50 percent less likely to have methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in their nasal passages. Drinking both are 67 percent less likely to have MRSA, according to Dr. Eric Matheson of the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston and colleagues.

In an effort to both prevent and treat MRSA, researchers have examined the antimicrobial effects of several commonly consumed plants and plant extracts, wrote Matheson. What remains unclear is whether tea and coffee have systemic antimicrobial activity when consumed orally as beverages.

Researchers analyzed data from the 2003 to 2004 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), a representative sample of the noninstitutionalized U.S. population that involved 5555 people.

In 2005, MRSA was responsible for an estimated 94,000 invasive life-threatening infections and close to 19,000 deaths, according to the Center for Disease Control (CDC).