BEIJING, Dec. 13 (Xinhuanet) -- Drinking a couple of cups of tea a day may help cut the ovarian cancer risk by up to 50 percent, Swedish researchers report.

    The findings were based on a population-based study by Susanna C. Larsson, M.Sc., and Alicja Wolk, D.M.Sc., of Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.

    Called the Swedish Mammography Cohort, the study involved 61,057 women who were 40 to 76 years old.

    At the beginning of the study, 68 percent of the participants said they drank tea (mainly black tea) at least once a month. During 15 years of follow-up, 301 women were diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

    Larsson and Wolk found that women who drank at least two cups of tea a day reduced their risk of developing ovarian cancer by 46 percent.

    "Each additional cup of tea per day was associated with an 18 percent lower risk of ovarian cancer," the authors reported.

    In addition, women who drank one cup a day cut their risk by 24 percent, and those who even drank less than one cup of tea a day reduced their risk by 18 percent compared with non-tea drinkers.

    "The advice to women is to increase the consumption of tea," Larsson said. "There are no harmful effects of tea."

     One expert sees this study, published in the Dec. 12/26 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine, as reason to look for the components in tea that may be protecting women from ovarian cancer. Enditem

(Agencies)