Cancer News: Green Tea Prevents Lung Cancer

Cancer News: Green tea prevents lung cancer

Drinking a cup of green tea a day may keep your oncologist away, according to a new study that found drinking green tea drastically was associated with reduced risk of developing lung cancer both in smokers and non-smokers.

The Taiwanese case-control study led by I-Hsin Lin and colleagues at Chung Shan Medical University found that regardless of the smoking status, those who drank at least one cup of green tea per day had 5.16-fold decreased risk of lung cancer compared with those who did not drink.

For the study, the researchers compared 170 patients with lung cancer and 340 healthy patients for their cigarette smoking habits, green tea consumption, dietary intake of fruit and vegetables, cooking practices and family history of lung cancer.

They also determined polymorphisms for insulin-like growth factors and other growth factors including IGF1, IGF2 and IGFBP3, which have been associated with elevated cancer risk.

Among smokers, those who drank at least one cup of green tea a day had 12.71-fold decreased risk of lung cancer compared with those who did not drink.

Polymorphisms of the growth factors were found to have an impact on the risk of lung cancer as well.  Green tea drinkers with non-susceptible IGF1(CA)19/(CA)19 and (CA)10/X genotypes were 66 percent less likely to have lung cancer compared with green tea drinkers with the IGF1 X/X genotype.

Additionally, heavy smokers with susceptible IGF1, IGF2, and IGFBP3 genotypes had a higher risk of lung cancer than nonsmokers with non-susceptible IGF1, IGF2 and IGFBP3 genotypes.

"Our study may represent a clue that in the case of lung cancer, smoking-induced carcinogenesis could be modulated by green tea consumption and the growth factor environment," said Lin.

The study was presented at the AACR-IASLC Joint Conference on Molecular Origins of Lung Cancer held in Coronado, California from Jan. 11-14, 2010

Green tea is known to have preventative effects against certain cancers.   Early studies by Rutgers University scientists for example have already found in in-vitro studies that green tea components such as EGCG can promote apoptosis of cancerous cells.

Previous studies have also established an association between drinking green tea and lower incidence of certain cancers including prostate cancer, ovarian and colon cancer among others.

By David Liu