Evaluation of Anti-Obesity Activity, Acute Toxicity, and Subacute Toxicity of Probiotic Dark Tea.

Wang Ling,Qizhen Du,Jianchun Bian,Guangguang Wang,Xingcai Zhang,Kai Sun,Shungeng Li,Ying Gao,Yongquan Xu,Wentong Fan,Gizhen Du,Jianchun Bain

doi:10.3390/biom8040099

Abstract

Probiotic dark tea (PDT) is a novel kind of dark tea produced by fresh albino tea leaves and fermented with specific probiotics. Our study demonstrates that PDT can ameliorate high-fat diet-induced overweight and lipid metabolic disorders and shows no acute or subacute toxicity in Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats. Daily intragastric administration of 5% PDT infusion for 14 days caused no obvious effect on general physiological features and behaviors of rats. Oral administration of 1%, 2%, and 3% of PDT infusion for six weeks had no influence on the biochemistry and histopathology of rats’ organs and blood, as well as the body weight and ratios of organ/body weight. To investigate its anti-obesity activity, SD rats were randomly divided into four groups, treated with normal diet + water (Group I), high-fat diet + water (Group II), high-fat diet + 3% traditional dark tea infusion (Group III), high-fat diet + 3% PDT infusion (Group IV). After six weeks, the body weight, serum total triacylglycerol (TG) and serum total cholesterol (TC) levels of rats in Group II were significantly increased and the high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL) levels were significantly decreased compared with those in the other three groups. Both traditional dark tea and PDT treatment effectively counteracted the adverse effect of a high-fat diet in SD rats. These results suggest that PDT could be applied for the prevention of obesity, which ameliorates overweight and lipid metabolic disorders and which shows no acute or subacute toxicity.

Highlights

Obesity is a medical condition in which excess body fat has accumulated to the extent that it may have a negative effect on health
The food intake and body weight of rats were not affected by daily administration of 5% probiotic dark tea (Figure 1A,B)
The results of liver function tests and kidney function tests showed no elevation of the levels of aspartate transaminase (AST), alkaline phosphatase (ALT), gamma glutamyl transpeptidase (GGT), total bilirubin (TBIL), blood urea nitrogen (BUN), total proteins (TP) and creatine kinase (CK) in the rats administered probiotic dark tea at a dosage up to 3% (Table 2)

Summary

Introduction

Obesity is a medical condition in which excess body fat has accumulated to the extent that it may have a negative effect on health. Tea has been shown to be preventive to these diseases [2,3,4]

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion