BEIJING, Dec. 19 (Xinhuanet) -- Drinking a few cups of tea every day may help reduce the risk of developing ovarian cancer, Sweidish researchers have found.
The researchers examined 61,057 Swedish women between 40 and 76 years of age. During 15 years of studies that began in the late 1980s, 301 women in the study group developed ovarian cancer. Those who reported drinking two or more cups of tea a day were less likely to develop the disease than non-tea drinkers.
"We observed a 46 percent lower risk of ovarian cancer in women who drank two or more cups of tea per day compared to non-drinkers," said Susanna Larsson and Alicja Wolk of the National Institute of Environmental Medicine in Stockholm, Sweden.
The researchers did subdivide the group by tea types, but most of the women drank black tea. Black and green tea both contain polyphenols ¡ª substances thought to block cell damage that can lead to cancer.
The results of the study was published in the December issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.
"If these findings are real, they'd be important because ovarian cancer is the fourth leading cause of cancer death in women," said Marji McCullough, a nutritional epidemiologist at the American Cancer Society. Enditem
(Agencies)
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