Tea & Parkinson's Disease

A small Israeli study of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) has found that those who drink more than 3 cups of tea per day delay the age of developing PD by more than 7 years. A total of 278 patients completed the study. To minimise bias the patients were not told about the purpose of the study.

Tea drinking was categorised into 3 groups: none, <2, 2-3 and >3 cups per day - details about volume, tea type, brewing method and whether milk was added were not sought.

Around 64% of the participants were, or had been, tea drinkers, although the vast majority continued to drink tea before and after the development of PD. There was a significant delay in the age of onset of motor symptoms by 7.7 years in patients who drank more than 3 cups of tea per day.

The possible mechanism for this association was not investigated but the authors anticipated caffeine might have an effect. However coffee consumption was also investigated in this study and no protective effect was found. The higher caffeine levels in coffee compared to tea would suggest that factors other than caffeine are having a beneficial effect. One suggestion is that it may be the free-radical scavenging phenolic compounds in tea exerting a neuroprotective effect.

This is the first study to investigate the effect of tea drinking on the age of onset of PD motor symptoms. Although a small study, these results are highly encouraging and warrant further research to confirm whether there is a causative relationship as well as determining whether different tea types have similar effects.
Kandinov, B., Giladi, N. and Korczyn, A. (2008) Smoking and tea consumption delay onset of Parkinson's disease. Parkinsonism Relat Disord. Apr 21