Green Tea Reduces Absorption of Cholesterol, Alpha-Tocopherolin Rats

MANHATTAN, Kan.--Green tea was found to affect the intestinalabsorption of cholesterol and alpha-tocopherol in ovariectomized rats byresearchers at Kansas State University, who published their results in the Juneissue of the Journal of Nutrition (132, 6:1282-88, 2002) (www.nutrition.org).For eight hours, the rats were given 3.0 mL/hour of a lipid emulsion containing ¹⁴C-cholesteroland alpha-tocopherol with or without greet tea extract standardized to 42.9 mgor 120.5 mg of total catechins. The green tea extracts were found todose-dependently reduce the lymphatic absorption of cholesterol, and theabsorption of alpha-tocopherol was also significantly reduced in both green teagroups compared to the control group. The absorption of fat was significantlyincreased in the low-dose catechin group, but lowered in the high-dose group ascompared to control. Researchers concluded these results provide direct evidencethat green tea has an inhibitory effect on the intestinal absorption ofcholesterol and alpha-tocopherol, although whether this effect was attributableto a specific catechin or other components in green tea remains to bedetermined.