Green Tea Consumption Reduces CVD, All-Cause Mortality

SENDAI, Japan--Increased daily intake of green tea appears to reduce the risk of all-cause and cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality, but no correlation was seen for cancer mortality rates, according to a new population study out of Japan. Results of the Ohsaki National Health Insurance Cohort Study, which included 40,530 Japanese adults, were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (296:1255-65, 2006).

Study participants were followed for up to 11 years for all-cause mortality and up to seven years for cause-specific mortality; green tea consumption was gauged from questionnaires that also tracked other habits including diet, alcohol and tobacco use, weight and physical activity. In the all-cause phase, 4,209 participants died, while in the cause-specific seven-year segment, 892 participants died of CVD and 1,134 of cancer.

The inverse association with CVD mortality was greater than that with all-cause mortality, and the association with all-cause and CVD mortality was stronger in women than in men. Women who drank five or more cups of green tea daily had a 31-percent lower risk of dying from CVD than women who drank less than one cup daily; five cups daily dropped the risk of stroke mortality in women by 62 percent and all-cause mortality by 23 percent. In men, those consuming five or more cups of green tea daily dropped their all-cause mortality rate by 12 percent, CVD death rate by 22-percent and stroke mortality incidence by 42 percent. Hazard ratios of cancer mortality were not significantly different in other consumption groups.