• Yasutake Tomata, Masako Kakizaki, Naoki Nakaya, Toru Tsuboya, Toshimasa Sone, Shinichi Kuriyama, Atsushi Hozawa, and Ichiro Tsuji.
• Division of Epidemiology, Department of Public Health and Forensic Medicine, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, Sendai, Miyagi, Japan. y-tomata@med.tohoku.ac.jp
• Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 2012 Mar 1; 95 (3): 732-9.

BackgroundPrevious studies have reported that green tea consumption is associated with a lower risk of diseases that cause functional disability, such as stroke, cognitive impairment, and osteoporosis. Although it is expected that green tea consumption would lower the risk of incident functional disability, this has never been investigated directly.ObjectiveThe objective was to determine the association between green tea consumption and incident functional disability in elderly individuals.DesignWe conducted a prospective cohort study in 13,988 Japanese individuals aged ≥65 y. Information on daily green tea consumption and other lifestyle factors was collected via questionnaire in 2006. Data on functional disability were retrieved from the public Long-term Care Insurance database, in which subjects were followed up for 3 y. We used Cox proportional hazards regression analysis to investigate the association between green tea consumption and functional disability.ResultsThe 3-y incidence of functional disability was 9.4% (1316 cases). The multiple-adjusted HR (95% CI) of incident functional disability was 0.90 (0.77, 1.06) among respondents who consumed 1-2 cups green tea/d, 0.75 (0.64, 0.88) for those who consumed 3-4 cups/d, and 0.67 (0.57, 0.79) for those who consumed ≥5 cups/d in comparison with those who consumed <1 cup/d (P-trend < 0.001).ConclusionGreen tea consumption is significantly associated with a lower risk of incident functional disability, even after adjustment for possible confounding factors.

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