Green Tea Encourages Growth of Akkermansia muciniphila

Trillions of microorganisms reside in the hosts' gut. Since diverse activities of gut microbiota affect the hosts' health status, maintenance of gut microbiota is important for maintaining human health. Green tea (GT) has multiple beneficial effects on energy metabolism with antiobesity, antidiabetic, and hypolipidemic properties. As GT contains a large amount of bioactive ingredients (e.g., catechins), which can be metabolized by microorganisms, it would be feasible that consumption of GT may cause compositional changes in gut microbiota, and that the changes in gut microbiota would be associated with the beneficial effects of GT. In this study, we demonstrated that consumption of GT extract relieves high-fat diet-induced metabolic abnormalities. Interestingly, GT administration significantly encouraged the growth of Akkermansia muciniphila (Akkermansia), a beneficial microorganism to relieve obesity and related metabolic disorders. Finally, we found that epigallocatechin gallate is the component of GT that stimulates the growth of Akkermansia. According to these data, we propose that GT could be a prebiotic agent for Akkermansia to treat metabolic syndromes.