Is coffee good or bad for your health? Researches have shown that coffee is good against Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, gallstones, diabetes, memory loss, eye spasm, constipation, skin cancer, muscle pain, gout and bad mood. Other scientists signal the harmful effect of coffee on heart (causing palpitations), sleep, pregnancy (from low birth weight and prematurity to miscarriage), and mood (causing anxiety).

Now, a new research published in the American medical journal "Cancer" points that three cups of coffee daily may impede the development of ovarian cancer. Caffeine would be responsible for a cut down of ovarian cancer risk of 20%. The effect was even more powerful in the case of women who do not take hormones (the Pill or hormone replacement therapy).

The research was made on 122,000 American nurses, from 1976 to 2004. The author Dr. Shelley Tworoger of Harvard Medical School assessed how the lifestyle of 80,000 of these subjects impacted the rate of ovarian cancer. During the follow-up period, 737 of the women experienced ovarian cancer.

The subjects drinking at least three cups of coffee daily were 20% less exposed to developing ovarian cancer than those who did not drink coffee at all. In women who had never taken the Pill, this effect went up to 35%. In the case of the subjects who had not underwent hormone replacement therapy, coffee consume cut down ovarian cancer risk by over 43%.

"We observed a significant inverse trend of ovarian cancer risk with caffeine intake. The reasons why caffeine protects against ovarian cancer is not clear and further studies will be carried out," wrote Tworoger.

"The jury is still out as to whether or not caffeine affects the risk of ovarian cancer because evidence from previous studies looking at this link has been inconsistent," warned Josephine Querido, of Cancer Research UK.