Cheng Lizeng, Wei Yang, Peng Lanlan, Wei Kang, Liu Zhonghua, Wei Xinlin
School of Agriculture and Biology, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, P.R. China.
Key Laboratory of Tea Science of Ministry of Education, Hunan Agricultural University, Changsha, Hunan, P.R. China.
Crit Rev Food Sci Nutr. 2024 Nov;64(31):11321-11340. doi: 10.1080/10408398.2023.2236701. Epub 2023 Aug 16.
As far as health benefit is concerned, dark tea is one of the best beverages in the world. Theabrownins are the major ingredient contributing to the health benefits of dark tea and known as "the soft gold in dark tea." A growing body of evidence indicated that theabrownins are macromolecular pigments with reddish-brown color and mellow taste, and mainly derived from the oxidative polymerization of tea polyphenols. Theabrownins are the main active ingredients in dark tea which brings multiple health-promoting effects in modulating lipid metabolism, reducing body weight gain, attenuating diabetes, mitigating NAFLD, scavenging ROS, and preventing tumors. More importantly, it's their substantial generation in microbial fermentation that endows dark tea with much stronger hypolipidemic effect compared with other types of tea. This review firstly summarizes the most recent findings on the preparation, structural characteristics, and health-promoting effects of theabrownins, emphasizing the underlying molecular mechanism, especially the different mechanisms behind the effect of theabrownins-mediated gut microbiota on the host's multiple health-promoting benefits. Furthermore, this review points out the main limitations of current research and potential future research directions, hoping to provide updated scientific evidence for their better theoretical research and industrial utilization.
就健康益处而言，黑茶是世界上最好的饮品之一。茶褐素是赋予黑茶健康益处的主要成分，被誉为“黑茶中的软黄金”。越来越多的证据表明，茶褐素是一种呈红棕色且口感醇厚的大分子色素，主要来源于茶多酚的氧化聚合。茶褐素是黑茶中的主要活性成分，在调节脂质代谢、减轻体重增加、缓解糖尿病、减轻非酒精性脂肪性肝病、清除活性氧和预防肿瘤等方面具有多种促进健康的作用。更重要的是，它们在微生物发酵过程中的大量产生，使黑茶具有比其他类型茶叶更强的降血脂作用。本综述首先总结了茶褐素在制备、结构特征和促进健康作用方面的最新研究成果，强调了其潜在的分子机制，特别是茶褐素介导的肠道微生物群对宿主多种健康促进益处作用背后的不同机制。此外，本综述指出了当前研究的主要局限性和未来潜在的研究方向，希望为其更好的理论研究和工业利用提供最新的科学依据。
