NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Green tea for your skin? For those who haven't been keeping up, the increasingly popular beverage is appearing in more and more skin products, including lotions, creams, bath and shower wash, and shampoo. Manufacturers tout green tea's antioxidant properties, suggesting it can help prevent sunburn, wrinkles, and even skin cancer. And according to a report in the August issue of the Archives of Dermatology, they may be right.

``The weight of experimental evidence concerning green tea strongly suggests the possibility of its future use as a significant pharmacologic agent for the prevention and treatment of a variety of human skin disorders,'' write Dr. Hasan Mukhtar and colleagues from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. Note the terms ``possibility'' and ``future'' here. The researchers emphasize that although components of green tea have been shown to help prevent and even cure skin diseases--including cancer--in mice, the necessary research has not yet been done with humans. And it is not clear if applying tea extracts to the skin is the same as drinking the beverage.

Green tea is produced by steaming and drying fresh tea leaves without allowing their components to oxidize. It is consumed mainly in Asian countries, including Japan, China, Korea and India, while most tea (78%) is consumed as black tea--the dominant type found in Western nations.

Green tea has been widely touted as an antioxidant--a substance that helps the body dispose of the waste products produced when it burns fuel for energy. Build-up of these waste products is thought to contribute to the body's vulnerability to disease, including cancer. The substances in green tea that act as antioxidants are called polyphenols.

Mukhtar and colleagues looked at the research conducted on green tea and skin cancer, much of which has been done in their own laboratories. In mice, green tea taken orally or applied directly to the skin in an ointment has been shown to prevent damage from ultraviolet light (like that caused by the sun), which can lead to skin cancer.

Other studies looked at the ability of green tea to prevent skin cancer itself. Mice that had green tea ointment applied to their skin for a week, then were exposed to chemicals that cause skin cancer, developed fewer and smaller tumors than those that were not treated with the tea-containing ointment.

So why aren't doctors insisting we all drink green tea and spread it on our skin? Mukhtar and colleagues explain that while the research with mice is promising, it is not clear if all this works the same way in humans. What's needed, they point out, is more research. The researchers also note that even though many products--from toothpaste to depilatory creams--claim they contain green tea extract, the level of polyphenols varies widely. It is also unlikely that any of the products have been tested to see if there is any clinical benefit to the ingredient.

In an accompanying editorial, Dr. Gary S. Wood from the University Hospitals of Cleveland, Ohio, agrees that more studies are needed. ``The full potential of these compounds for the prevention and treatment of human skin diseases awaits further definition in controlled clinical trials,'' he states. Wood also points out, however, that dermatologists need to know about the effects of green tea extracts on the skin, because they will be seeing an increasing number of patients who use them.

(Form Yahoo)