Published 29 April 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b1736
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;338:b1736

Letters

Tea and cancer

Why northern Iran?

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Islami and colleagues say that their ecological study showed that "inhabitants of Golestan drank more tea and at a higher temperature than people living in a nearby area with a low incidence of oesophageal cancer."1 How might the tea drinking habits of the inhabitants of Golestan compare with those of people living in Iran’s other provinces?

The research team used interviews to complete validated questionnaires, but how accurate and honest might the response to the question about alcohol consumption be in an Islamic republic where alcohol is officially prohibited? The rates of alcohol consumption in Golestan might be higher than anywhere else in Iran because of its proximity to other nations around the Caspian sea, alcohol being more readily available for consumption in private. Other areas of Iran may have similar tea drinking habits and lower oesophageal cancer rates because of lower confounding factors such as alcohol.

Cite this as: . . . [Full text of this article]

Reza Aghamohammadzadeh, core medical trainee1

1 Manchester

rzadeh@doctors.org.uk


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Relevant Article

Tea drinking habits and oesophageal cancer in a high risk area in northern Iran: population based case-control study
Farhad Islami, Akram Pourshams, Dariush Nasrollahzadeh, Farin Kamangar, Saman Fahimi, Ramin Shakeri, Behnoush Abedi-Ardekani, Shahin Merat, Homayoon Vahedi, Shahryar Semnani, Christian C Abnet, Paul Brennan, Henrik Møller, Farrokh Saidi, Sanford M Dawsey, Reza Malekzadeh, and Paolo Boffetta
BMJ 2009 338: b929. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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