Green tea consumption might actually reduce the effect of smoking on lung cancer. A Taiwanese researcher said that smokers who are not genetically susceptible to cancer would be benefited the most.

''The antioxidants may inhibit tumor growth," I-Hsin Lin, a master's degree student at Chung Shan Medical University in Taiwan, said.

Lin's team assessed 340 healthy patients and 170 patients who had lung cancer. They questioned all the participants about their cigarette smoking habits, whether they have green tea and other lifestyle factors for the past five years.

For further studies, the researchers conducted genotyping in the participants. This was to see if they had any of the genotypes like IGF1 (insulin-like growth factor 1), IGF2, and IGFBP3 found in some studies to be associated with cancer risk.

Lin found that the smokers and nonsmokers without green tea consumption were five times more likely to have lung cancer compared to those who had at least one cup of green tea a day.

Smokers who did not have green tea had almost 13 times more chances of having lung cancer as compared to smokers who drank green tea.

Green tea drinkers who were found not to have a genotype termed by the researchers had a 66 per cent less risk of developing lung cancer as compared to the green tea drinkers who were found to be susceptible.

Dr Norman Edelman, chief medical officer of the American Lung Association, also agreed with the above findings.