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A population-based, case-control study of green tea consumption and leukemia risk in southwestern Taiwan
Yau-Chang Kuo1, Chu-Ling Yu, Chen-Yu Liu
1Environmental and Occupational Medicine and Epidemiology Program, Department of Environmental Health, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA. kuo550221@yahoo.com.tw
Objective:
This study investigated the association between green tea consumption and leukemia.
Methods:
A total of 252 cases (90.3% response) and 637 controls (53.4% response) were enrolled. Controls were matched for cases on age and gender. Information was collected on participants' living habits, including tea consumption. Green tea was used as a standard to estimate the total amount of individual catechin consumption. We stratified individual consumption of catechins into four levels. Conditional logistic regression models were fit to subjects aged 0-15 and 16-29 years to evaluate separate associations between leukemia and catechin consumption.
Results:
A significant inverse association between green tea consumption and leukemia risk was found in individuals aged 16-29 years, whereas no significant association was found in the younger age groups. For the older group with higher amounts of tea consumption (>550 units of catechins), the adjusted odds ratio (OR) compared with the group without tea consumption was 0.47 [95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.23-0.97]. After we adjusted for smoking status and medical irradiation exposure, the overall OR for all participants was 0.49 (95% CI = 0.27-0.91), indicating an inverse relation between large amounts of catechins and leukemia.
Conclusion:
Drinking sufficient amounts of tea, especially green tea, which contains more catechins than oolong tea and black tea, may reduce the risk of leukemia.
