Assessing the association of coffee consumption on the relationship of chronic pain with depression and anxiety

Background A bidirectional relationship between chronic pain (CP) and mental disorders has been reported, and coffee was believed to be associated with both. However, the association of coffee in this bidirectional relationship remains unclear. We aim to analyze the association of coffee consumption on the relationship of CP with depression and anxiety.Methods A total of 376,813 participants from UK Biobank were included. We collected data on anxiety, depression and CP from objects of our study population. The association of coffee consumption on the relationship of CP with depression and anxiety was assessed through logistic/linear regression models. Moreover, seemingly unrelated estimation test (SUEST) was used to compare whether the coefficients differed in two different groups.Results We observed significant associations of coffee consumption in the interaction of CP with depression and anxiety, such as the association of multisite chronic pain (MCP) on self-reported depression (βcoffee = 0.421, βnon-coffee = 0.488, PSUEST = 0.001), and the association of MCP on generalized anxiety disorder-7 (GAD-7) scores (βcoffee = 0.561, βnon-coffee = 0.678, PSUEST = 0.004) were significantly different between coffee drinking and non-coffee drinking groups. Furthermore, in analysis stratified by gender, we found headache (βmale = 0.392, βfemale = 0.214, PSUEST = 0.022) and hip pain (βmale = 0.480, βfemale = 0.191, PSUEST = 0.021) had significant associations with self-reported depression between males and females groups in coffee drinkers.Conclusions Our results suggested that coffee consumption has a significant association on the relationship of CP with depression and anxiety.