Objective: To explore the association between green tea consumption and coronary arterial disease (CAD) in the Chinese population of Guangzhou. Design, location, subjects: A retrospective study at the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital in Guangzhou, China. Consecutive patients were enrolled between January 2013 and August 2014. A total of 539 patients were included. Two hundred sixty-seven of them are CAD patients and 272 of them are non-CAD patients. The CAD patients were diagnosed according to international diagnostic criteria.
Interventions: Using data from the questionnaires and clinical laboratories, we attempted to elucidate the association between green tea and CAD.
Outcome measures: Baseline characteristics of study population, CAD-related biomarkers, amount, frequency and duration of green tea consumption, and CAD risk analysis.
Results: The results showed that among males, those who drank green tea did not have a reduced risk of CAD (odds ratio; OR = 1.58, 95% CI: 0.96-2.59, p > 0.05). However, women in the study who drank green tea had a reduced risk of CAD (OR = 0.13, 95% CI: 0.07-0.23, p < 0.01). The females who consumed ≤1 cup/day green tea had lower CAD risk (OR = 0.12, 95% CI: 0.07-0.23, p < 0.01). The frequency of 3-5 days/week (OR = 0.14, 95% CI: 0.07-0.29, p < 0.01) and >5 days/week (OR = 0.24, 95% CI: 0.08-0.69, p < 0.01) were both beneficial in preventing CAD. Those who had been drinking green tea for 0-10 years (OR = 0.11, 95% CI: 0.04-0.30), 10-20 years (OR = 0.22, 95% CI: 0.11-0.46), or >20 years (OR = 0.37, 95% CI: 0.12-0.96) had a reduced risk of CAD.
Conclusions: Through the analysis of green tea consumption and CAD-related biomarkers, we concluded that a small amount of high-frequency green tea consumption was associated with a reduced risk of CAD in female populations in Guangzhou, China, and the association might be partly due to altered CAD-related biomarkers.
Keywords: Chinese population; coronary arterial disease; green tea.