An international team of researchers headed by Dr. Dominique S. Michaud from the Department of Community Health at the Brown University confirmed that a cup of tea or coffee can do more than just boosting your energy levels.  They added that consuming a cup of coffee or tea lower brain cancer risk. The researchers also added that people who drank a little as much as half a cup of coffee could lower their brain cancer risk by 34 percent.  

The perception that drinking coffee or tea can lower the risk of brain tumors was based on a previous research that coffee or tea may help to ease down the symptoms of  Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.

Dr. Michaud and his associates impressed on the possibility that chemicals in coffee and tea may play important role in curbing a form of brain cancer called glioma. It was found that glioma is a form of cancer that originates in brain and affects central nervous system.

Dr. Jonathan Friedman, who is a director of the Texas Brain and Spine Institute at Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine in Bryan, also voiced his support in favor of this research calling it "surprising."  He further elaborated that “However, the mechanism by which coffee is protective is completely unknown”, but he indicated that the caffeine might be an important ingredient, along with some other ingredients found in tea and coffee and may have relevancy as any other natural antioxidants.

Dr. Michaud and his associates have extracted the necessary data from series of studies, which were conducted as a part of European Prospective Investigation. These studies were mainly conducted to ascertain the nutrition and cancer rates amongst the European population.  Around 410,000 men and women between the ages of 25-70 were tracked over the course of 8.5 years 1991-2000. These participants were from Italy, France, Spain, Great Britain, Norway, German, Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, and Greece. Many food surveys were conducted during this time to ascertain the food habits of the participants, including the amount of tea and coffee that each participant consumed.

During the course of study, around 343 new cases of glioma were detected and similarly around 245 new cases of meningioma, were also detected. Meningioma is also a form of cancer that affects the spinal cord.

The regular coffee and tea drinking patterns varied greatly from country to country, whereas the decaffeinated coffee consumption was very low. During the study it was found that Danish were largest coffee consumers (3.5 cups per day), whereas the Italians were lowest consumers (half a cup per day). Similarly the Brits were the largest tea consumers and the Spaniards were the lowest. When the coffee and tea drinking patterns were pitted against the brain cancer incidence and it was found that the participants, who drank at least 100 ml of either of the two drinks daily, lowered the risk of glioma by around 34 percent. It was observed that generally the men benefitted from the protective effects of tea and coffee.

Dr. Jonathan Friedman says that additional studies are needed to confirm the reliability of these findings.  Dr. Frieman and Dr. Michaud were supported by Dr. John S. Yu, who serves as the director of the Brain Tumor Center of Excellence at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. He also voiced in favor of these finding by  calling them "striking." He further added that any drug that reduced the risk of cancer by 34 percent is a great drug because it exhibits greater degree of risk reduction. He also suggested that caffeine may aid in lowering the risk of breast cancer as well. But a shadow of skepticism engulfs his views  “It has not yet been established whether or not this is directly causative -- [in other words, whether] drinking caffeine directly reduces disease risk -- or whether this is actually about an association between other factors concerning the type of people who drink a certain amount of coffee and risk reduction.” Many other researchers like Yu have stressed upon the necessity of conducting more studies to ascertain whether caffeine really helped in curbing the disease or not.

You can read the detailed information about the study on "coffee/or tea lower brain cancer risk" from the November 2010 issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

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