People Who Drink Coffee Are Less Likely To Carry MRSA Infection: Study

People who drink tea or coffee regularly may be less likely to carry the MRSA infection in their nostrils, a new study published in the Annals of Family Medicine revealed today.

MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, a staph infection-causing bacterium that is resistant to common antibiotics, is potentially lethal, causing pneumonia and blood infections.

The study was provoked after topically applied or inhaled tea extracts showed anti-MRSA properties, said lead researcher Dr. Eric M. Matheson of the University of South Carolina, Charleston told Fox News.

1.4 percent of the random sample was found to carry MRSA in their noses; this number decreased by 50% among people who said that they drink coffee and hot tea.

Matheson told Fox News, but you can never conclude causation from an association, and added that I can't tell you that this finding isn't just a coincidence since several factors including age and income were not accounted for. Still, when researches tried to account for these factors, there still seemed to be a more than tenuous relationship between drinking hot tea and coffee and lower rates of MRSA.

Furthermore, it is still unclear whether carriers of MRSA are more likely to progress to active infection than non-carriers.

MRSA caused approximately 95,000 severe infections nationwide in 2005 and 19,000 Americans lost their lives to it. Furthermore, rates of infection have been rising since the 1990s.