BEIJING – A study involving 100,902 Chinese adults found an association between tea consumption and reduced risks of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality, especially among consistent, habitual tea drinkers.

Habitual tea drinkers, meaning those who drank tea three or more times per week, had 1.41 years longer of years free of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease and 1.26 years longer of life expectancy at the index age of 50 years, according to the study that appeared online Jan. 8 in The European Journal of Preventive Cardiology. The hazard ratios among habitual tea drinkers, when compared with never or non-habitual tea drinkers, were 0.80 for atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease incidence, 0.78 for atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease mortality and 0.85 for all-cause mortality.

The study may be found here.

Of all the people in the study, 31.6% drank tea three or more times per week at baseline. The study involved people in the project of Prediction for ASCVD Risk in China since 1998. Standardized questionnaires were used to collect data on tea consumption. The median follow-up was 7.3 years.

The Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and the National Key R.&D. Program of China provided financial support. Researchers were from Peking Union Medical College, Nanjing Medical University, Shenzhen University School of Medicine, Fujian Provincial People’s Hospital, Guangdong Provincial People’s Hospital and Cardiovascular Institute, the Sichuan Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and Kailuan Hospital.