Tea Research Update

Drinking tea delays the onset of Parkinson's disease

A small Israeli study of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) has found that those who drink more than 3 cups of tea per day delay the age of developing PD by more than 7 years.
This retrospective study recruited patients with a clinical diagnosis of PD from the Movement Disorders Unit in Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Centre. Consecutive patients were identified through the researchers' computerised database. Of the 300 originally recruited, 283 agreed to participate. After exclusions a total of 278 patients completed the study. To minimise bias the patients were not told about the purpose of the study.

PD motor symptoms onset were defined as the year in which any motor disturbances that could later be attributed to PD were first noticed by the patient, a family relative or a caregiver as recorded in the medical file. Information about tea consumption was gathered, including the number of cups per day (caffeine-free and herbal teas were not counted towards tea consumption), the duration of tea drinking prior to PD symptom onset and the age of starting tea drinking and stopping (if appropriate). Data was obtained from a first degree relative for subjects with dementia.

Tea drinking was categorised into 3 groups: none, <2, 2-3 and > 3 cups per day - details about volume, tea type, brewing method and whether milk was added were not sought.
The average age of the study population was 68.4 years and the mean age at motor symptom onset was 58.1 years. As a result the average duration of the disease was 10.3 years.
Around 64% of the participants were, or had been, tea drinkers, although the vast majority continued to drink tea before and after the development of PD. There was a significant delay in the age of onset of motor symptoms by 7.7 years in patients who drank more than 3 cups of tea per day.

The possible mechanism for this association was not investigated but the authors anticipated caffeine might have an effect. However coffee consumption was also investigated in this study and no protective effect was found. The higher caffeine levels in coffee compared to tea would suggest that factors other than caffeine are having a beneficial effect. One suggestion is that it may be the free-radical scavenging phenolic compounds in tea exerting a neuroprotective effect.

This is the first study to investigate the effect of tea drinking on the age of onset of PD motor symptoms. Although a small study, these results are highly encouraging and warrant further research to confirm whether there is a causative relationship as well as determining whether different tea types have similar effects.

Kandinov, B., Giladi, N. and Korczyn, A. (2008) Smoking and tea consumption delay onset of Parkinson's disease. Parkinsonism Relat Disord. Apr 21 (Epub Ahead of print) 1-6.

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