Evaluation of acute anti-inflammatory and analgesic activities of green tea decoction on experimental animal models

Abstract

Background: Green tea has been used as a daily beverage for several years. Anti-inflammatory effect of tea has also been depicted in different papers. Therefore we had set forward this study to examine the potential anti-inflammatory and analgesic activities of green tea in different experimental animal models. Aims: Evaluation of anti-inflammatory effects of green tea on rat. Evaluation of analgesic effects of green tea on mice. Materials and Methods: Green tea decoction (10% and 20%) was prepared by soaking 20 g of green tea in 100 ml boiled water separately, soaked for 2 mins and thereafter filtered. Acute anti-inflammatory activity of tea decoction was evaluated using carrageenan and dextran whereas central and peripheral analgesic activities were evaluated by tail immersion test and acetic acid-induced writhing test, respectively. Study Design: This is an experimental study. Results: Green tea decoction (10% and 20%) has shown significant anti-inflammatory effects (65% and 70%) and (50% and 71%), respectively, on carrageenan and dextran-induced acute inflammatory models which can be comparable with the standard drug indomethacin (93% and 98.3%, respectively). In central analgesic model Green tea decoction (10% and 20%) has shown no analgesic action at different hours as the reaction time was less than 10 seconds at all time interval. But at peripheral analgesic model green tea decoction (10% and 20%) has shown 20% and 35.74% inhibition, respectively, as compared to control group. Aspirin shows around 39.81% of inhibition compared to control. Conclusion: Taken together, our data indicate that green tea (20%) has a potential anti-inflammatory and peripheral analgesic action and this corroborates with the current trend of tea being promoted as 'health drink'.