Green tea has been the subject of medical studies for decades, and is reputed to have long-purported health benefits. Research has shown some evidence that regular green tea drinkers have lower chances of heart disease and developing certain types of cancer. However, a recent study reveals breast cancer isn’t included in the cancers green tea protects against.

"Although in vitro and animal-based studies have suggested that green tea may have beneficial protective effects against breast cancer, results from human studies have been inconclusive,” which Motoki Iwasaki from the National Cancer Center, Tokyo was quoted as saying. Our large-scale, population-based prospective cohort study is one of the first to include a wide range of tea intakes; women who drank green tea less than 1 cup per week to those who drank 10 or more cups per day. It found no overall association between green tea intake and the risk of breast cancer.”

A questionnaire was used to assess the women’s tea intake at both the beginning of the study as well as five years later. Furthermore, cancer incidence was assessed by notification from major local hospitals in the study area and data linkage with population-based cancer registries.

Approximately 12% of women drank green tea less than 1 cup per week while 27% drank 5 or more cups per day.

"The other major strength of the present study was its prospective design, in which information was collected before the subsequent diagnosis of breast cancer, thereby avoiding the exposure recall bias inherent to case-control studies. Drinking green tea as a beverage is unlikely to reduce the risk of breast cancer regardless of green tea type and number of cups,” Iwasaki concluded.

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SOURCE: Breast Cancer Research, 27 October 2010