PLoS ONE (Jan 2012)

Tea consumption and incidence of type 2 diabetes in Europe: the EPIC-InterAct case-cohort study.

  • InterAct Consortium,
  • Geertruida J van Woudenbergh,
  • Anneleen Kuijsten,
  • Dagmar Drogan,
  • Daphne L van der A,
  • Dora Romaguera,
  • Eva Ardanaz,
  • Pilar Amiano,
  • Aurelio Barricarte,
  • Joline W J Beulens,
  • Heiner Boeing,
  • H Bas Bueno-de-Mesquita,
  • Christina C Dahm,
  • M-Doleres Chirlaque,
  • Francoise Clavel,
  • Francesca L Crowe,
  • Piia-Piret Eomois,
  • Guy Fagherazzi,
  • Paul W Franks,
  • Jytte Halkjaer,
  • Kay T Khaw,
  • Giovanna Masala,
  • Amalia Mattiello,
  • Peter Nilsson,
  • Kim Overvad,
  • J Ramón Quirós,
  • Olov Rolandsson,
  • Isabelle Romieu,
  • Carlotta Sacerdote,
  • María-José Sánchez,
  • Matthias B Schulze,
  • Nadia Slimani,
  • Ivonne Sluijs,
  • Annemieke M W Spijkerman,
  • Giovanna Tagliabue,
  • Anne Tjønneland,
  • Rosario Tumino,
  • Nita G Forouhi,
  • Stephen Sharp,
  • Claudia Langenberg,
  • Edith J M Feskens,
  • Elio Riboli,
  • Nicholas J Wareham

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0036910
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 7, no. 5
p. e36910

Abstract

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In previous meta-analyses, tea consumption has been associated with lower incidence of type 2 diabetes. It is unclear, however, if tea is associated inversely over the entire range of intake. Therefore, we investigated the association between tea consumption and incidence of type 2 diabetes in a European population.The EPIC-InterAct case-cohort study was conducted in 26 centers in 8 European countries and consists of a total of 12,403 incident type 2 diabetes cases and a stratified subcohort of 16,835 individuals from a total cohort of 340,234 participants with 3.99 million person-years of follow-up. Country-specific Hazard Ratios (HR) for incidence of type 2 diabetes were obtained after adjustment for lifestyle and dietary factors using a Cox regression adapted for a case-cohort design. Subsequently, country-specific HR were combined using a random effects meta-analysis. Tea consumption was studied as categorical variable (0, >0-<1, 1-<4, ≥ 4 cups/day). The dose-response of the association was further explored by restricted cubic spline regression. Country specific medians of tea consumption ranged from 0 cups/day in Spain to 4 cups/day in United Kingdom. Tea consumption was associated inversely with incidence of type 2 diabetes; the HR was 0.84 [95%CI 0.71, 1.00] when participants who drank ≥ 4 cups of tea per day were compared with non-drinkers (p(linear trend) = 0.04). Incidence of type 2 diabetes already tended to be lower with tea consumption of 1-<4 cups/day (HR = 0.93 [95%CI 0.81, 1.05]). Spline regression did not suggest a non-linear association (p(non-linearity) = 0.20).A linear inverse association was observed between tea consumption and incidence of type 2 diabetes. People who drink at least 4 cups of tea per day may have a 16% lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes than non-tea drinkers.