IJE Advance Access originally published online on March 2, 2005
International Journal of Epidemiology 2005 34(2):483; doi:10.1093/ije/dyh212
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Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Epidemiological Association
Letters to the Editor |
Authors' response
1 Department of Epidemiology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA
2 Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute, NIH, DHHS, Bethesda, MD, USA
3 Department of Epidemiology, Public Health Sciences, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, NC, USA
4 Global Epidemiology, Amgen, Thousand Oaks, CA, USA
Dr Tokudome and colleagues1 ask for more than any systematic review of the currently available epidemiological literature on tea and cardiovascular disease can deliver. If a sufficient number of investigators were to publish trend estimates for specific cardiovascular disease outcomes in relation to intake of specific compounds or classes of compounds in tea and other beverages and foods, those estimates would be able to be systematically reviewed. Until then, it is a hypothesis in search of a literature.
Very few populations contain sufficient numbers of people drinking 
10 cups of tea per day to permit effects of intakes that high to be estimated with anything but the grossest imprecision. We evaluated trend estimates at an increment of three cups per day2,3 because that was the largest increment that fit well within the observed ranges of actual intakes in the published study populations.
Regarding potential interventions that might conceivably result someday from research on this topic, an increase of three cups per day in average tea intake would be a wildly unrealistic goal to set at the population level. Getting a population to increase its average tea intake by 10 cups per day would be pure fantasy. There is always the possibility that one or more preventive compounds might be identified and used for nutritional supplementation or dietary fortification, but the realization of such a possibility is a very long way off at best.
As a more general matter, Dr Tokudome and colleagues suggest that statistical significance constitutes proof. It does not.
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References |
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 Top References |
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1 Tokudome S, Imadea N, Goto C, Tokudome Y, Moore MA. Black tea and cardiovascular disease. Int J Epidemiol 2005; 34:482–83.
2 Peters U, Poole C, Arab L. Does tea consumption affect cardiovascular disease? A meta-analysis. Am J Epidemiol 2001; 154:495–503.
3 Poole C, Peters U, Il'yasova D, Arab L. Commentary: this study falied. Int J Epidemiol 2003; 32:534–35.
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