J S Ren et al, Tea, coffee, carbonated soft drinks and upper gastrointestinal tract cancer risk in a large United States prospective cohort study, European Journal of Cancer, Article in Press, May 2010

The authors investigated the relationship between hot tea, iced tea, coffee and carbonated soft drinks consumption and upper gastrointestinal tract cancers risk in the NIH-AARP Study. During 2,584,953 person-years of follow-up on 481,563 subjects, 392 oral cavity, 178 pharynx, 307 larynx, 231 gastric cardia, 224 gastric non-cardia cancer, 123 Oesophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma and 305 Oesophageal Adenocarcinoma (EADC) cases were accrued. Hazard ratios and confidence intervals were calculated by multivariate-adjusted Cox regression. Compared to non-drinking, the hazard ratio for hot tea intake of > 1 cup/day was 0.37 for pharyngeal cancer. The authors also observed a significant association between coffee drinking and risk of gastric cardia cancer (compared to <1 cup per day, the hazard ratio for drinking > 3cups/day was 1.57, and an inverse association between coffee drinking and Oesophageal adenocarcinoma for the cases occurring in the last 3 years of follow-up, but no association in earlier follow-up. In summary, the authors state that, 'in this large prospective study that included 1760 cases of oral, laryngeal, pharyngeal, oesophageal and gastric cancers, we observed an inverse association between hot tea intake and pharyngeal cancer, a direct association between coffee intake and gastric cardia cancer and an inverse association between coffee intake and EADC during some follow-up periods'.