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. 2018 Sep 25;8(4):99.
doi: 10.3390/biom8040099.

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

Wang Ling  1   2 , Shungeng Li  3 , Xingcai Zhang  4 , Yongquan Xu  5 , Ying Gao  6 , Qizhen Du  7 , Guangguang Wang  8   9 , Wentong Fan  10   11 , Kai Sun  12   13 , Jianchun Bian  14   15
Affiliations

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

Wang Ling et al. Biomolecules. .

Retraction in

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.

Keywords: Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats; acute toxicity; anti-obesity; dyslipidemia; probiotic dark tea; subacute toxicity.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Effect of daily administration of 5% probiotic dark tea for 14 days on the food intake (A) and body weight (B) of Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Effect of daily administration of 1%, 2% and 3% probiotic dark tea for six weeks on the body weight (A) and relative organ weights (B) of SD rats.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Effect of traditional dark tea and probiotic dark tea on the body weight (A), serum total cholesterol levels (B), serum total triglyceride levels (C) and serum high density lipoprotein cholesterol levels (D) of high-fat diet SD rats. *, ** represents statistical significance at p < 0.05, p < 0.01, compared with Group Ι, respectively; #, ## represents statistical significance at p < 0.05, p < 0.01, compared with Group II, respectively.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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