Content area

Full Text

Chenyu Chu [1] and Jia Deng [1] and Yi Man [1; 2] and Yili Qu [1]

Academic Editor: Tong Li

1, State Key Laboratory of Oral Diseases, West China Hospital of Stomatology, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610041, China, scu.edu.cn

2, Department of Oral Implantology, West China Hospital of Stomatology, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610041, China, scu.edu.cn

Received Apr 18, 2017; Accepted Jun 28, 2017

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

1. Introduction

Green tea is one of the most popular drinks in the area of China and Japan [1], whose main chemical components are tea polyphenols (30% dry weight) [2]. Polyphenols share various therapeutic effects against pathological conditions including cancer, inflammation, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases [3–5]. Recently, scientific interest in polyphenols has been rapidly increased. Tea polyphenols in green tea possess lots of catechins including catechin, epicatechin (EC), epicatechin-3-gallate (ECG), epigallocatechin (EGC), and epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG). Among these components, EGCG is the most abundant tea polyphenol. Moreover, it is reported that the galloyl moiety of tea catechins plays crucial roles in benefits of tea catechins, especially in lipid lowering effect [6, 7]. Compared to other tea catechins, galloyl moiety of catechins (EGCG and ECG) possesses the most biological activities including angiogenesis [8]. Peoples believe that drinking green tea is beneficial to health and it has been demonstrated that EGCG is with inhibitory effects in many aspects of abnormal changes, such as antioxidant, anticancer, anti-inflammatory, anticollagenase, and antifibrosis effects, appearing in its wide functional range (Figure 1). It can be speculated that EGCG, to some extent, has the effect of protecting organs or tissues from a pile of diseases. Moreover, EGCG has promotional effect on osteogenesis [9, 10]. Although the researches concerning EGCG are still on the road accompanied with quite a few controversies, EGCG is more likely to be beneficial to health.

[figure omitted; refer to PDF]

2. The Basic Properties of EGCG

2.1. Anticancer Effect

For all the time, the anticancer property of EGCG is the focal point of researches. On one hand, EGCG can inhibit tumorigenesis by inhibiting carcinogen activity [11, 12]. There are findings suggesting that EGCG prevents diethylnitrosamine-induced obesity-related liver...

Show less