Studying and enhancing the hypoglycemic effect of Pingyang Yellow Soup and preliminary exploration of its internal mechanisms in a zebrafish model

Abstract

Yellow tea belongs to specialty tea, and it is loved by consumers because of its unique flavor and taste. Herein, Pingyang Yellow Soup (PYS, a kind of yellow tea) was chosen. In this study, we investigated the effects of PYS on the hypoglycemic effect of the zebrafish model and explored its potential mechanism of action. Results showed that PYS had very strong and definite hypoglycemic biological activity. Meanwhile, different water/material ratios, extraction temperatures, and extraction times had significant influence on the hypoglycemic performance of PYS, and the strength of influence was ranked as extraction temperature > extraction time > water/material ratio. In addition, results showed that the removal rate of tea polyphenols (TPs) in PYS had a strong linear correlation to the degree of decreased hypoglycemic performance, indicating the hypoglycemic performance was closely related to TPs levels. The comprehensive analysis revealed that the nor-sugar rate of PYS had a variety of regression relationships with its components, and the best hypoglycemic performance does not require the highest content levels of each component but depends on what it is, and there exists a relative optimal value, which provides basic information for exploring the internal mechanism of action of hypoglycemic effects and developing functional tea drinks of PYS.