A report published in the Archives of Internal Medicine in June 2006 notes that coffee helps heavy drinkers avoid cirrhosis of the liver, a disease whose number one cause is alcohol abuse. 

Scientists followed 125,000 members of a pre-paid healthcare plan for 14 years, beginning in 1978.  Of those studied, 199 had liver cirrhosis caused by excessive alcohol intake.

  The coffee drinking and other dietary and health habits of all the study subjects were established using interviews and questionnaires.

Results demonstrated the following:

•    Compared with people who never drank coffee, those who drank one cup a day or less were about 30 percent less likely to develop alcoholic cirrhosis.
•    At one to three cups per day, the risk was lowered by 40 percent.
•    Those who drank more than four cups a day reduced their risk by 80 percent.
•    Coffee had no statistically significant effect on the risk for non-alcoholic cirrhosis.

"Not everything enjoyable is bad for you," said Dr. Arthur L. Klatsky, the study's lead author and a cardiologist with the Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program in Oakland, Calif. "Moderate coffee drinking has no net ill effects on health."

Researchers have not determined which ingredient in coffee is responsible for the positive results but have stated that it’s not caffeine, according to the New York Times article.

According to the National Institutes of Health, in cirrhosis of the liver, scar tissue replaces normal, healthy tissue, blocking the flow of blood through the organ and preventing it from working as it should. Cirrhosis is the twelfth leading cause of death by disease, killing about 26,000 people each year.