Drinking tea daily helps prevent incidence of stroke

Regular consumption of tea, particularly green tea, may help reduce the risk of ischaemic and haemorrhagic stroke, according to a study involving Chinese adults.

A total of 128,280 adults (26.3 percent of the studied population) reported drinking tea almost daily (41.4 percent men and 15.9 percent women), mostly green tea (86.7 percent). Tea consumption was inversely associated with the risk of stroke in a dose-dependent manner (p-trend<0.001).

Adults who drank tea occasionally (hazard ratio, 0.96, 95 percent confidence interval [CI], 0.94–0.99), weekly (HR, 0.94, 95 percent CI, 0.90–0.98) and daily (HR, 0.89, 95 percent CI, 0.89–0.95) had a lower risk of stroke, with little difference by stroke type, than nondrinkers.

The risk for stroke decreased with increasing duration and amount of tea consumed among daily tea drinkers (p-all<0.001). These inverse relations were only significant for green tea but not for other types of tea. Of note, the inverse associations could be found among men but not women, and similar inverse relations were detected for male noncurrent alcohol consumers as well as noncurrent smokers.

To assess the relationship between tea consumptions and the risk of stroke, the researchers analysed data of 487,377 participants from the China Kadoorie Biobank. Detailed information about tea consumption (ie, frequency, duration, amount and tea type) was self-reported at baseline.

Overall, 38,727 incident cases of stroke were recorded after approximately 4.3 million person-years of follow-up, primarily through linkage with mortality and morbidity registries and based on the national health insurance system.