Associations of tea consumption with blood pressure progression and hypertension incidence

BACKGROUND: Association between tea consumption and incident hypertension remains uncertain. This study conducted to examine the health effects of tea consumption on blood pressure progression and hypertension incidence. METHODS: A population-based cohort of 38,913 Chinese participants without hypertension at baseline were included in the current study. Information on tea consumption was collected through standardized questionnaires. Associations of tea consumption with blood pressure progression and incident hypertension were analyzed using logistic regression models and Cox proportional hazards regression models, respectively. RESULTS: During a median follow-up of 5.9 years, 17,657 individuals had experienced progression to a higher blood pressure stage and 5,935 individuals had developed hypertension. In multivariate analyses, habitual tea drinkers (≥ 3 times/week for at least six months) had a 17% lower risk for blood pressure progression [odds ratio (OR) = 0.83, 95% CI: 0.79–0.88] and a 14% decreased risk for incident hypertension [hazard ratio (HR) = 0.86, 95% CI: 0.80–0.91] compared with non-habitual tea drinkers. Individuals in different baseline blood pressure groups could obtain similar benefit from habitual tea drinking. In terms of tea consumption amount, an inverse, linear dose-response relation between monthly consumption of tea leaves and risk of blood pressure progression was observed, while the risk of incident hypertension did not reduce further after consuming around 100 g of tea leaves per month. CONCLUSIONS: Our study demonstrated that habitual tea consumption could provide preventive effect against blood pressure progression and hypertension incidence.