Objectives

To examine the relationships between tea consumption habits and incident neurocognitive disorders (NCD) and explore potential effect modification by gender and the apolipoprotein E (APOE) genotype.

Design

Population-based longitudinal study.

Setting

The Singapore Longitudinal Aging Study (SLAS).

Participants

957 community-living Chinese elderly who were cognitively intact at baseline.

Measurements

We collected tea consumption information at baseline from 2003 to 2005 and ascertained incident cases of neurocognitive disorders (NCD) from 2006 to 2010. Odds ratio (OR) of association were calculated in logistic regression models that adjusted for potential confounders.

Results

A total of 72 incident NCD cases were identified from the cohort. Tea intake was associated with lower risk of incident NCD, independent of other risk factors. Reduced NCD risk was observed for both green tea (OR=0.43) and black/oolong tea (OR=0.53) and appeared to be influenced by the changing of tea consumption habit at follow-up. Using consistent nontea consumers as the reference, only consistent tea consumers had reduced risk of NCD (OR=0.39). Stratified analyses indicated that tea consumption was associated with reduced risk of NCD among females (OR=0.32) and APOE e4 carriers (OR=0.14) but not males and non APOE e4 carriers.

Conclusion

Regular tea consumption was associated with lower risk of neurocognitive disorders among Chinese elderly. Gender and genetic factors could possibly modulate this association.