Female Tea Drinkers Appear to Have Fewer Bouts of Gastric Cancer

Tea Drinkers Appear to Have Fewer Bouts of Gastric Cancer
04 Apr 2012
By World Tea News

TOKYO, Japan

Researchers at the National Cancer Center in Tokyo report that women who drank five or more cups of tea a day were 21 percent less likely to be diagnosed with gastric cancer.

There were is no similar association observe for men.

The study is compiled from results of eight separate research papers and three case-controlled studies as analyzed by the Shizuka Sasazuki research team and published in the Japanese Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Gastric or stomach cancer has a high mortality rate, killing 800,000 people worldwide each year. This disease most often occurs in men and women aged 40 or older.

Authors of this study said previous epidemiological studies resulted in inconsistent conclusions and they would like to combine all data from quality studies to see if there is an inverse association between drinking green tea and risk of gastric cancer in men and women.

In a report on the findings by David Liu, Ph.D. for Food Consumer(foodconsumer.org), writes “the study results did not mean that drinking green tea would definitely reduce the risk of stomach cancer even though that possibility cannot be excluded either.”

“Case-control studies, however, consistently showed an inverse correlation between green tea consumption and stomach cancer risk. But the association was weak or moderate,” writes Liu.

“Although this study did not establish any inverse association between green tea intake and risk of gastric cancer in men, it did not exclude the possibility either. It is possible that some other factors outweighed the effect of green tea on the risk of gastric cancer, making the protective effect of green tea insignificant,” according to Liu.

Source: FoodConsumer.org