Tea is a beverage famous for its medical and health benefits. U.S. statistics show 80 percent of households consume tea. In a new study, tea consumption leads to epigenetic changes in women. Epigenetics is the interaction of DNA with myriads of molecules found within cells which activates or deactivates genes. Proof of these changes is found in female tea drinkers based on the result of the study made by researchers from the Uppsala University.
Results of the study were recently published in the journal Human Molecular Genetics in an article with the title "Tea and Coffee Consumption in relation to DNA Methylation in Four European Cohorts." Coffee and tea are the drinks that health buffs prefer for their property of suppressing tumor growth in the body. Drinking tea aids the human body's inflammatory system and enhances the metabolism of estrogens in which their functions are due to the epigenetic changes in DNA methylation.
Epigenetics is a study on gene expression changes that is passable up to the fourth generation. It studies how external and internal factors, like the lifestyle and environment, affect which genes are to be turned on and switched off. These changes also influence the health and wellbeing of the individual and their children, reports Medical News Today.
To confirm DNA methylation in blood is really caused by drinking tea and coffee, the researchers made a genome-wide study in four European categories of the same ages. The result of the study shows that there are epigenetic changes in women but not in men. It is most interesting to find that the changes discovered in women involve genes in cancer and estrogen metabolism. Coffee did not represent any epigenetic changes in the blood of both men and women, reports Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News.
Women are associated with drinking tea more than men, which tends to lean on more effects to the female than the males, says the leader of the study and researcher of the Department of Immunology, Genetics, and Pathology, Veronica Ek. The study also shows the effects of drinking tea to health and how it influences epigenetic changes in the body. Further study is needed to understand if the changes boost or interrupt with the transcription of genes.