The past four years have brought a wealth of good news for coffee drinkers seeking to fend off the cold specter of death. This new research fully Italianizes this concept, focusing specifically on consumption of Italian-style short coffee, known the world over as espresso, and its relationship to all-cause mortality in humans.

Published in the Journal of Nutrition, the Italian study analyzed data on 20,487 adult men and women that were part of Italy’s Moli-sani study. That cohort involved adult men and women, age 35-94 at the outset, beginning in 2005 who were free from cardiovascular disease and cancer, and were followed up for a median period of 8.3 years.