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Regularly drinking very hot tea, when combined with tobacco or alcohol use, is associated with an increased risk for oesophageal cancer, according to a Chinese study with more than 450 000 participants.1 However, the study, published in Annals of Internal Medicine, found no increased risk of oesophageal cancer in those who drank hot tea but did not smoke or regularly drink alcohol. Alcohol consumption and tobacco smoking are already well established causes of oesophageal squamous cell cancer. China is among the countries with the highest incidence of oesophageal cancer. Tea drinkers, especially Chinese men, are more likely to smoke …

That’s what the research says. A Danish study hit the headlines this week, showing that people who drink alcohol three to four days a week had around a 30% lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes than teetotallers.1 The lowest risks of diabetes were in men who consumed 14 alcoholic drinks and women who knocked back nine drinks a week. Well, the …

More help and support need to be given to the hundreds of thousands of children living with a parent who misuses alcohol regularly, a report from England’s Office of the Children’s Commissioner says.1 The report describes how more children are affected by parents who drink alcohol excessively than the number whose parents take illegal drugs. But parental alcohol misuse is not taken as seriously as parental drug misuse by children’s services, despite alcohol being a far easier to obtain addictive substance, as it is legal, advertised, and easy to buy, the report explains. The researchers held focus groups with children who had at least one parent who drank alcohol to excess to …

Young people should not drink any alcohol until at least the age of 15, reports new guidance from the Chief Medical Officer for England. If 15 to 17 year olds do drink alcohol they should do so on no more than one day a week and only in the presence of a parent or carer in a supervised environment. Launching the guidance, Liam Donaldson said, “There is a really formidable list of diseases and injury associated with alcohol consumption. But on top of this the developing brain is particularly vulnerable. Drinking alcohol causes subtle degrees of brain damage leading to memory problems and difficulties …

The British press loves nothing better than a story about sex. So it proved again when the national newspapers devoted nearly 350 column inches to adolescents' sexual health after a recent paper by consultant epidemiologist Angus Nicoll and colleagues ( BMJ 15 May). The sexual health of teenagers, they claimed, deteriorated in England and Wales between 1995 and 1996: there were more pregnancies and higher rates of sexually transmitted disease. In an accompanying editorial Martin McKee, professor of European public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, placed the findings in a wider context, revealing that teenagers in England and Wales have poorer sexual health and are also more likely to drink alcohol and use illegal drugs than other western European teenagers. Some newspapers, responsibly, limited themselves to factual accounts, using statistics from the original articles and adding results from other surveys in an effort to paint a picture of current teenage lifestyles. But several major newspapers wasted no time in …

Moira Plant Free Association Books, £15.95, pp 388 ISBN 1 85343 364 0 The macho Romans meted out severe punishments to women (the traditional producers and retailers of alcohol) if they touched a drop of the stuff; the fun loving Etruscans made sure that women as well as men were provided with wine in the afterlife. Nowadays men drink alcohol in some Islamic countries, but women on the whole do not; we enlightened Europeans boast that we …