Los Angeles, Dec 15 (PTI) Drinking a cup of hot tea atleast once a day may significantly lower risk of developingglaucoma - a serious eye condition, a study suggests.
However, drinking decaffeinated and caffeinated coffee,decaffeinated tea, iced tea and soft drinks does not seem tomake any difference to glaucoma risk, said researchers fromthe University of California in the US.
Glaucoma causes fluid pressure to build up inside the eye(intraocular pressure), damaging the optic nerve.
It is one of the leading causes of blindness worldwide,and currently affects 57.5 million people, and is expected toincrease to 65.5 million by 2020, according to the studypublished in the journal BMJ.
Previous research suggests that caffeine can alterintraocular pressure, but no study so far has compared thepotential impact of decaffeinated and caffeinated drinks onglaucoma risk.
The researchers looked at data from the 2005-2006National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) inthe US.
Among the 1678 participants who had full eye testresults, including photos, 84 (5 per cent) adults haddeveloped the condition.
They were asked how often and how much they had drunk ofcaffeinated and decaffeinated drinks, including soft drinksand iced tea, over the preceding 12 months, using aquestionnaire.
Compared with those who did not drink hot tea every day,those who did, had a lower glaucoma risk, the data showed.
After taking account of potentially influential factors,such as diabetes and smoking, hot tea-drinkers were 74 percent less likely to have glaucoma.
However, no such associations were found for coffee -caffeinated or decaffeinated - decaffeinated tea, iced tea orsoft drinks. PTI SNE SARSNE.
This is unedited, unformatted feed from the Press Trust of India wire.