Tea consumption and cardiovascular disease risk

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 Tea consumption and cardiovascular disease risk

1. Lenore Arab,
2. Faraz Khan, and
3. Helen Lam

+ Author Affiliations

1. ¹From the David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, CA.

+ Author Notes

• ↵2 Presented at the conference “Fifth International Scientific Symposium on Tea and Human Health,” held at the US Department of Agriculture, Washington, DC, 19 September 2012. The conference was organized by Jeffrey Blumberg, Tufts University, Boston, MA, and a Steering Committee including representatives from each of the symposium cosponsors: the American Cancer Society, the American College of Nutrition, the American Institute for Cancer Research, the American Medical Women's Association, the American Society for Nutrition, and the Linus Pauling Institute. The symposium was underwritten by the Tea Council of the USA. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the Tea Council of the USA or the cosponsoring organizations.
• ↵3 Address correspondence to L Arab, 700 Tiverton Drive, 12-262 Factor, Box 951736, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1736. E-mail: larab@mednet.ucla.edu.

Abstract

Background: The present analysis was conducted in response to inconsistent epidemiologic studies on the relation between consumption of tea and cardiovascular diseases.

Objective: We undertook a literature review of the consistency and strength of the associations between tea and cardiovascular diseases on the basis of published observational studies and meta-analyses addressing tea or tea flavonoids and cardiovascular disease risk.

Design: We performed a search in 3 databases for meta-analyses and compared them with studies they subsumed. We performed an additional search for subsequent studies to determine whether the conclusions were consistent.

Results: Many epidemiologic studies have been conducted and summarized in 5 meta-analyses on either tea consumption or flavonoid consumption and cardiovascular disease or the subset of stroke. Heterogeneity of effect was seen when the outcome included all cardiovascular diseases. In the case of stroke, a consistent, dose-response association with tea consumption on both incidence and mortality was noted with RRs of 0.80 (95% CI: 0.65, 0.98) for flavonoids and 0.79 (95% CI: 0.73, 0.85) for tea when high and low intakes were compared or the addition of 3 cups/d was estimated.

Conclusion: Thus, the strength of this evidence supports the hypothesis that tea consumption might lower the risk of stroke.