March 26, 2009 -- Drinking hot or very hot tea may make a certain type of esophageal cancer more likely.

That news appears in the advance online edition of BMJ, formerly called the British Medical Journal.

Researchers studied tea drinkers in northern Iran's Golestan province, which has a high rate of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.

That's the world's most common type of esophageal cancer. But it's not the type of esophageal cancer that's been rising in Western countries (that's adenocarcinoma of the esophagus).

Why study tea drinkers in northern Iran? Because just about everyone there drinks tea daily, and some esophageal cancer risk factors, like smoking tobacco and drinking alcohol, aren't common.