Tea consumption and long-term risk of type 2 diabetes and diabetic complications: a cohort study of 0.5 million Chinese adults

BACKGROUND: Evidence from epidemiological studies remains inconsistent or limited about the associations of tea consumption with incident diabetes and risk of diabetic complications and death among patients with diabetes. OBJECTIVES: We aimed to investigate the associations of tea consumption with long-term risk of developing type 2 diabetes (T2D) and risks of diabetic complications and death among patients with diabetes. METHODS: This study included 482,425 diabetes-free participants and 30,300 patients with diabetes aged 30–79 y at study enrollment from the China Kadoorie Biobank. Tea consumption information was collected at baseline by interviewer-administered questionnaires. Incidences of diabetes, diabetic complications, and death were identified by linkages to the National Health Insurance system, disease registries, and death registries. Cox proportional hazard regression models were used to estimate HRs and 95% CIs. RESULTS: The mean ± SD age of participants free of diabetes was 51.2 ± 10.5 y and 41% were male. The mean ± SD age of patients with diabetes was 58.2 ± 9.6 y and 39% were male. Of all daily tea consumers, 85.8% preferred green tea. In the diabetes-free population, 17,434 participants developed incident T2D during 11.1 y of follow-up. Compared with participants who never consumed tea in the past year, the HR (95% CI) of T2D for daily consumers was 0.92 (0.88, 0.97). In patients with diabetes, we identified 6572 deaths, 12,677 diabetic macrovascular cases, and 2441 diabetic microvascular cases during follow-up. Compared with patients who never consumed tea in the past year, the HRs (95% CIs) of all-cause mortality and risk of microvascular complications for daily consumers were 0.90 (0.83, 0.97) and 0.88 (0.78, 1.00), respectively. Tea consumption was not associated with risk of macrovascular complications among patients with diabetes. With regard to tea consumed, the inverse associations between daily tea consumption and risks of T2D and all-cause mortality in patients with diabetes were only observed among daily green tea drinkers. CONCLUSIONS: In Chinese adults, daily green tea consumption was associated with a lower risk of incident T2D and a lower risk of all-cause mortality in patients with diabetes, but the associations for other types of tea were less clear. In addition, daily tea consumption was associated with a lower risk of diabetic microvascular complications, but not macrovascular complications.