Published 26 March 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b610
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;338:b610

Editorials

Hot tea and increased risk of oesophageal cancer

Allowing tea to cool for five minutes before drinking is advisable

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

In the linked case-control study (doi:10.1136/bmj.b929), Islami and colleagues assess the association between how people drink their tea and the risk of oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma.1

Cancers of the oesophagus kill more than 500 000 people worldwide each year, with the bulk of the disease occurring in discrete populations in Asia, Africa, and South America.2 3 Despite recent increases in the incidence of adenocarcinomas of the oesophagus in industrialised nations,4 5 the most common subtype of oesophageal cancer worldwide is oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma. Tobacco and alcohol are the main causal factors related to oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma in the West, but they are not implicated in non-Western populations that have very high rates of this disease. Nutritional deficiency,6 viral infection,7 and dietary toxins8 have all been postulated as causal factors, although none can fully explain the extraordinary excess of cases of oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma seen in these populations.


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. . . [Full text of this article]

 

David C Whiteman, NHMRC principal research fellow

1 Queensland Institute of Medical Research, PO Royal Brisbane Hospital, QLD 4029, Australia

david.whiteman@qimr.edu.au


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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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