Tea Consumption and Cognitive Impairment: A Cross-Sectional Study among Chinese Elderly

Laboratorial and epidemiological researches suggested that tea exhibited potential neuroprotective effect which may prevent cognitive impairment, but there were few data among the elderly aged 60 years and above in China. The objective was to explore the relationship between characteristics of tea consumption and cognitive impairment. We analyzed the baseline data from Zhejiang Major Public Health Surveillance Program (ZPHS) which was conducted in 2014. Totally 9,375 residents aged 60 years and above were recruited in this study. Face-to-face interview based on a self-developed questionnaire was performed for each participant. Detailed tea consumption habits were included in the questionnaire. Cognitive impairment screening was performed by using Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE). Education-specific cut-off points for Chinese were applied to determine the status of cognitive impairment. Logistic regression analysis was used to calculate odds ratios (ORs) of cognitive impairment associated with tea consumption. The means (SD) of MMSE scores for the subjects who did not consume tea and consumed