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Women who
drink tea... |
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...can cut
their risk by almost 50 percent!
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Swedish researchers reported that women who drink at least two cups
of tea a day could reduce their risk of developing ovarian cancer by
almost 50 percent!
Experimental evidence reveals that green and black tea might lower
the risk of some cancers, however this is one of the few studies
that are specific to reduce the risk of ovarian cancer.
The report appears in the December 12/26/05 issue of the Archives
of Internal Medicine.
The study led by Susanna C. Larsson and Alicja Wolk, of the National
Institute of Environmental Medicine at the Karolinska Institute in
Stockholm, looked at 61,057 women who were 40 to 76 years old.
The women all participated in a population-based study called the
Swedish Mammography Cohort. At the beginning of the study, 68
percent of the participants said they drank tea (mainly black tea)
at least once a month. During 15 years of follow-up, 301 women were
diagnosed with ovarian cancer.
"We found a lower risk of ovarian cancer associated with greater tea
consumption," Larsson said. Larsson and Wolk found that women who
drank at least two cups of tea a day reduced their risk of
developing ovarian cancer by 46 percent.
"Each additional cup of tea per day was associated with an 18
percent lower risk of ovarian cancer," the authors reported. In
addition, women who drank one cup a day cut their risk by 24
percent, and those who even drank less than one cup of tea a day
reduced their risk by 18 percent compared with non-tea drinkers.
"The advice to women is to increase the consumption of tea," Larsson
said. "There are no harmful effects of tea." One expert sees this
study as reason to look for the components in tea that may be
protecting women from ovarian cancer.
Dr. Robert Morgan Jr., the head of medical gynecologic oncology at
City of Hope Cancer Center in Duarte, California says, that
lifestyle interventions can be successful in cancer prevention. He
also adds these interventions are particularly important in ovarian
cancer and if diagnosed in early stage disease is very curable. Dr.
Morgan also says that screening interventions have been only
minimally effective in Ovarian cancer due to the non-specificity of
symptoms as well as the location of the ovaries deep in the pelvis,
making them difficult to examine directly. Thus, prevention
strategies are very important.
"Much data has recently been published suggesting that lifestyle
changes, including exercise and statins, may lead to decreased
incidences of new diagnoses of cancer or cancer recurrences. This
manuscript suggests that there are other natural products which may
be capable of the same phenomenon," Morgan said.
Since the reasons tea may be protective are not known, Morgan thinks
this study could lead researchers back to the lab to uncover the
mechanisms at work.
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