Saturday, April 18, 2009

Hot Tea Linked to Throat Cancer

People who drink their tea piping hot run a higher risk of throat cancer than counterparts who prefer a cooler cuppa, according to an investigation published Friday by the British Medical Journal.

Cancer of the oesophagus is linked especially to smoking and alcohol abuse but hot beverages have also been considered a risk factor, possibly because of damage to throat tissue.

Interested in finding out more, Iranian researchers went to Golestan province, which has one of the highest rates of oesophageal cancer in the world.

Inhabitants there sip large quantities of hot black tea -- typically drinking more than a liter (1.8 pints) per day per person -- but also have a low incidence of tobacco and alcohol use.

A team led by Reza Malekzadeh of the Digestive Disease Research Center at Tehran University of Medical Sciences looked at 300 people who had been diagnosed with a throat tumor and a matched group of 571 healthy people who lived in the same area. Read the entire article.

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