Green tea may help treat a form of adulthood leukemia, if the cases of four patients are any indication, according to a new report.
Doctors at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, found that of four patients who started drinking green tea or taking green tea extracts, three showed clear improvements in their condition in the following months.
The patients all had chronic lymphocytic leukemia, or CLL, a form of leukemia that usually arises during or after middle-age and typically progresses slowly. Like all types of leukemia, CLL is a cancer of the blood and bone marrow, in which abnormal white blood cells replace healthy blood cells.
That study showed that one compound found in green tea, known as EGCG, was able to kill cancer cells that were taken from CLL patients and put in a test tube with the tea compound.
After the findings were published, the doctors became aware of four CLL patients at their center who had started using green tea products and seemed to be doing better.