"drinking tea boosts the immune system's first line of defense against infection"

Results of a new study suggest that drinking tea boosts the immune system's first line of defense against infection. Researchers from Harvard Medical School asked volunteers who normally consume neither tea nor coffee to drink five to six cups of tea or instant coffee for two or four weeks. Afterward, blood tests showed tea drinkers' immune systems reacted against bacteria five times better than the immune systems of coffee drinkers. The tea seems to have helped make interferon gamma, an immune system protein. Next, the research team will study whether drinking tea actually protects people from getting sick.

Another study, in mice, showed that animals genetically engineered to develop prostate cancer and fed the equivalent of about six cups of tea a day didn't develop tumors. No one knows if drinking tea will have the same effect in humans, but researchers noted that the tea-drinking country of China has the lowest prostate cancer rate in the world. Results of both studies were reported at the American Chemical Society meeting on September 8, 2003.

American Chemical Society September 2003