Preventive consumption of green tea modifies the gut microbiota and provides persistent protection from high-fat diet-induced obesity

Green tea could reportedly modify gut microbiota and benefit on High-Fat-Diet (HFD) induced obesity. However, most of the studies usually gave green tea (GT) to animals while feeding them HFD. When thin or obese mice, drink GT continuously or only for a period of time, what kind of benefit will them get, is still need to evaluate. In this study, we found that preventive GT consumption by lean mice could prevent HFD-induced-obesity event after stop drinking GT, while the mice with pre-existing obesity couldn’t get such benefit. Gut microbiota structure analysis indicated that the anti-obesity effect by GT consumption always accompanied with microbiota structure modification. We hypothesized that this difference depended upon the status of gut microbiota. Therefore, to gain the persistently protective effect from GT, the precondition is drinking GT before getting fat; otherwise, GT could only slowdown the weight gain of the pre-obese mice by continuously consumption.