March 2, 2015

A nice cuppa

Q:  What do you think about this new research on tea preventing diabetes?

A: That’s not what it says

Q: Sure it is. Big black letters, right at the top: “Three cups of tea a day can cut your risk of diabetes… even if you add milk”

A: I mean that’s not what the research says

Q: The bit about milk?

A: Well, they didn’t study milk at all, but that’s not the main problem

Q: They didn’t study cups?

A: No. Or diabetes. Or, in one of the studies, tea.

Q: Hmm. Ok, so this “glucose-lowering effect” they write about, is that a lab study?

A: Yes.

Q: Mice?

A:  One of the studies used rats, the other didn’t

Q: Cells, then?

A: No, just enzymes in a test tube, and a highly processed chemical extract of tea.

Q: Ok, forget about that one. But the rat study, that measured actual glucose lowering and actual tea?

A:  Almost. They gave the rats a high-sugar drink, and if they were given the tea first, their blood glucose didn’t go up as much.

Q: Which of the two studies was this one?

A: The one where the story just says the results were similar and doesn’t give the researchers’ names, only their institution.

Q: Wouldn’t you think the story would say more about this one, since it actually involves blood glucose and, like, living things?

A: In a perfect world, yes.

Q: The story says they don’t think milk would make a difference. What about sugar?

A: No mention of it.

Q: That’s strange. Quite a lot of British people have sugar in their tea. Wouldn’t it be helpful to say something?

A: You’d think.

Q: How much tea did the rats get?

A: The lowest effective dose they report is 62.5 mg/kg of freeze-dried tea powder

Q: What’s that in cups?

A: The research paper says “corresponds to nine cups of black tea”.

Q: Per day?

A: No, all at once.

Q: So we need to get bigger cups?

A: Or fewer reprinted British ‘health’ stories.

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Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »