Effects of Green Tea, Black Tea, and Coffee Consumption on the Risk of Esophageal Cancer: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Observational Studies

Epidemiological studies regarding the associations of tea and coffee consumption with esophageal cancer (EC) risk are still inconsistent and this meta-analysis was conducted to examine these associations. PubMed, ISI -Web of Science, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), and Chinese VIP database up to October 2011 were searched and manual search for reference lists of relevant studies were conducted. Random effects model was used to pool the odds ratios (OR). Twenty-four case-control and cohort studies with 7376 EC cases were included in this meta-analysis. The pooled OR of EC was 0.77 [95% confidence intervals (95% CI): 0.57, 1.04] for highest vs. non/lowest green tea consumption; but it was statistically significant for case-control studies (OR = 0.70; 95% CI: 0.51, 0.96) and for studies conducted in China (OR = 0.64; 95% CI: 0.44, 0.95). No significant association was observed for the highest vs. non/lowest black tea consumption against EC risk (OR = 1.35; 95% CI: 0.86, 2.11). A borderline significantly inverse association of highest vs. non/lowest coffee consumption against EC risk was found (OR = 0.88; 95% CI: 0.76, 1.01). In conclusion, our data showed that both green tea and coffee consumption, but not black tea consumption, have protective effects on EC.