Taiwanese researchers believe that drinking green tea may offer some protection against ling cancer. The study, whicjh involved over 500 people, reinforced evidence that greent ea has anti-cancer properties.

Researchers found that lung cancer risk for smokers and non-smokers who drank at least a cup a day was cut "significantly", while noting that protection was greatest for people carrying certain genes.

"Among smokers and non-smokers, people who did not drink green tea were more than five times as likely to get lung cancer than those who drank at least one cup of green tea a day," reported Dr I-Hsin Lin, of Shan Medical University,. "Among smokers, those who did not drink green tea at all were more than 12 times as likely to develop lung cancer than those who drank at least a cup a day."

The scientists discovered that green tea drinkers with certain types of a gene called IGF1, whether smokers or non-smokers, were far less likely to develop lung cancer than other green tea drinkers with different types of this gene.