Theaflavins are polyphenols found in black tea, whose physiological activities are not well understood. This study on mice evaluated the influence of a single oral administration of theaflavins on energy metabolism by monitoring the initial metabolic changess in skeletal muscle and brown adipose tissue (BAT). Oxygen consumption (VO2) and energy expenditure (EE) were increased significantly in m...

The antibacterial activities of 10 different plant polyphenols were evaluated by comparing their minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) against several food-borne pathogenic bacteria, Staphylococcus aureus (20 strains), some serotypes of the genus Salmonella (26 strains), Escherichia coli (23 strains), and some species of the genus Vibrio (27 strains). The polyphenols examined were epigalloca...

Tea is one of the most popular beverages consumed in the world and has been demonstrated to have anti-cancer activity in animal models. Research findings suggest that the polyphenolic compounds, (-)-epigallocatechin-3-gallate found primarily in green tea, and theaflavin-3,3'-digallate, a major component of black tea, are the two most effective anti-cancer factors found in tea. Several mechanism...

SARS-CoV is the causative agent of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). The virally encoded 3C-like protease (3CL(Pro)) has been presumed critical for the viral replication of SARS-CoV in infected host cells. In this study, we screened a natural product library consisting of 720 compounds for inhibitory activity against 3CL(Pro). Two compounds in the library were found to be inhibitive: ta...

Several studies have demonstrated that tea flavonoids protect cells and tissues against free radicals which have been implicated in the etiology of oxidative stress-related disease disorders. However, black tea is commonly consumed with additives that could otherwise affect the bioavailability of the active tea molecules. In this study, the biochemical parameters of Kenyan teas were determined ...

Ovarian cancer has the highest fatality rate among the gynecologic cancers. The side effects, high relapse rate, and drug resistance lead to low long-term survival rate (less than 40%) of patients with advanced ovarian cancer. Theaflavin-3,3'-digallate (TF3), a black tea polyphenol, showed less cytotoxicity to normal ovarian cells than ovarian cancer cells. We aimed to investigate whether TF3 c...

Black tea, green tea, red wine, and cocoa are high in phenolic phytochemicals, among which theaflavin, epigallocatechin gallate, resveratrol, and procyanidin, respectively, have been extensively investigated due to their possible role as chemopreventive agents based on their antioxidant capacities. The present study compared the phenolic and flavonoid contents and total antioxidant capacities o...