COVID-19 and per capita green tea consumption: update

PurposeIn spite of the development of numerous vaccines for the prevention of COVID-19 and approvement of several drugs for its treatment, there is still a great need in effective and inexpensive therapy of this disease. Pharmacological evidence suggesting the therapeutic potential of green tea catechins in amelioration/treatment of COVID19 is growing rapidly, however, there are only a few epidemiological studies addressing this possibility. The aim of this study was to provide update regarding ecological study assessing this issue as of January 2021. MethodsThe methodological approach used in this report is similar to that described previously. Briefly, information about COVID-19 morbidity (defined as a total number of cases per million population) and mortality (defined as a total number of deaths per million population) for a specific date was directly obtained from Worldometers info. Coronavirus. Analysis was restricted to 134 countries or territories with at least 3 million population. Twenty-one of these countries/territories, with estimated per/capita green tea consumption above 150 g (annually), were considered as a group with the high consumption. Countries/territories with the estimated per/capita green tea consumption below 150 g (N=82) were considered as the group with low the consumption. ResultsPronounced differences in COVID-19 morbidity and mortality between groups of countries with high and low green tea consumption were found as of February 20, 2022. These differences were still observed in a subset of countries with HDI above 0.55. Moreover, in this restricted subset of countries, weak but statistically significant correlations between COVID-19 morbidity (or mortality) and per/capita green tea consumption were observed in a multiple regression model accounting for: population density, percentage of population aged above 65, and percentage of urban population. ConclusionThe obtained results provide additional, though indirect, support of the idea that green tea catechins can be useful for treatment/amelioration of COVID-19. These results are in line with emerging evidence from other studies, including pharmacological. Nevertheless, further research is necessary to directly validate or reject this idea.