Los Angeles: Just three cups of tea a day may slash the risk of a stroke by around 20 per cent, new research claims. The analysis was conducted in response to inconsistent epidemiologic studies on the relation between consumption of tea and cardiovascular diseases. Drinking three cups of tea a day can cut the risk of a stroke by a fifth, 'Daily Express' reported. Researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles, undertook a literature review of the consistency and strength of the associations between tea and cardiovascular diseases on the basis of published observational studies and meta-analyses addressing tea or tea flavonoids and cardiovascular disease risk.

They performed a search in 3 databases for meta-analyses and compared them with studies they subsumed. "We performed an additional search for subsequent studies to determine whether the conclusions were consistent," researchers said in the study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. "Thus, the strength of this evidence supports the hypothesis that tea consumption might lower the risk of stroke," the researchers concluded. A wealth of epidemiologic studies have been conducted and summarised in 5 meta-analyses on either tea consumption or flavonoid consumption and cardiovascular disease or the subset of stroke.