Drinking at Least Two Cups of Tea Daily Linked to Reduced Mortality Risk

TUESDAY, Aug. 30, 2022 (HealthDay News) — Drinking two or more cups of tea per day is associated with lower mortality risk, regardless of genetic variation in caffeine metabolism, according to a study published online Aug. 30 in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Maki Inoue-Choi, Ph.D., from the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, and colleagues examined the associations of tea consumption with all-cause and cause-specific mortality and the potential effect modification by genetic variation in caffeine metabolism in a prospective cohort study involving 498,043 men and women aged 40 to 69 years from the U.K. Biobank.

The researchers found that higher tea intake was modestly associated with lower all-cause mortality risk among those who drank two or more cups per day during a median follow-up of 11.2 years. The hazard ratios (95 percent confidence intervals) were 0.95 (0.91 to 1.00), 0.87 (0.84 to 0.91), 0.88 (0.84 to 0.91), 0.88 (0.84 to 0.92), 0.91 (0.86 to 0.97), and 0.89 (0.84 to 0.95), respectively, for those drinking one or fewer, two to three, four to five, six to seven, eight to nine, and 10 or more cups per day compared with no tea drinking. There were inverse associations seen for mortality from all cardiovascular disease, ischemic heart disease, and stroke. The findings were similar irrespective of whether participants also drank coffee and of genetic score for caffeine metabolism.

“These findings provide reassurance to tea drinkers and suggest that black tea can be part of a healthy diet,” the authors write.

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