Ovarian cancer risk lower in tea drinkers - study

[Celebration]

http://today.reuters.com/News/CrisesArticle.aspx?storyId=N12208022

CHICAGO, Dec 12 (Reuters) - Drinking two or more cups of tea per day may dramatically cut the risk of ovarian cancer, a Swedish study of more than 61,000 women said on Monday.

The findings by researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm were based on a look back at the habits and long-term health of the women, the report published in the Archives of Internal Medicine said.

Of the women recruited for the study that began in 1987, two-thirds reported drinking tea. When it concluded at the end of 2004, 301 participants had developed ovarian cancer, a particularly deadly form of the disease.

"We observed a 46 percent lower risk of ovarian cancer in women who drank two or more cups of tea per day compared with non-drinkers," study authors Susanna Larsson and Alicja Wolk wrote. "Each additional cup of tea per day was associated with an 18 percent lower risk of ovarian cancer."

[SheilaT]

1. This is the kind of reporting

of a study that makes me a little crazy. Can we be sure that the ONLY difference between the women who got ovarian cancer and those who didn't was the amount of tea they drank? Maybe something else is connected to the tea drinking, like not smoking, or eating some kind of food that happens to confer some kind of protection from various cancers.

On the other hand, did heavy tea drinkers have a higher incidence of something else bad than non tea drinkers?

While longitudinal studies like this are valuable, it's too easy to come up with simple answers to complex questions.