Green Tea Clears Babesia Infection in In Vivo Mouse Study

by Jane
(England)

Babesia is a blood parasite that is often a co-infection of Lyme disease. It is quite difficult to detect, and although in healthy adults it is often self-limiting, for other people it can be quite debilitating and tricky to cure.

Researchers in Japan have found that the most abundant catechin in green tea completely cleared infection of Babesia parasite in an in vivo mouse study. My own calculations suggest that (if the results are transferable to a human model) the dose of the catechin given to the infected mice would be equivalent to a human drinking about 4 cups of green tea per day. My calculations are quite rough, based on the average cup of green tea containing 50-150mg of polyphenols, of which 50-80% are the catechin -Epigallocatechin-3-gallate that was used in the experiment. Julian, I would love to hear your own opinion on this, with your superior knowledge of the components of green tea.

To the best of my knowledge, no human trials have yet been done, but the potential of the research is fascinating, and as I am a big fan of your website (and have recently ordered some of your Dragon Well tea which I am very excited to try), I thought that it might also be of interest to you and your visitors.

Sources
The scientific paper detailing the experiment: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20025823.

University of Maryland information on green tea: http://www.umm.edu/altmed/articles/green-tea-000255.htm

A fairly comprehensive abstract of the research paper detailing the main points of the studies:
http://www.mdjunction.com/forums/lyme-disease-support-forums/studies-research/1260396-green-tea-inhibits-babesia-journal-abstract

Comments for Green Tea Clears Babesia Infection in In Vivo Mouse Study

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Mar 11, 2012

Thanks!
by: Julian

Jane, that is an excellent post - thank you!

Your calculations are fine. Obviously it depends critically on the type of green tea you drink.

An early harvests would have a lot more antioxidants than an average loose green tea, which again will have a lot more antioxidants than a green tea bag.

Also storage will play an important part too in the preservation of antioxidants - they are highly reactive and vulnerable.

In any case, it is the case of drinking tea in moderation, and over the long term that will give the greatest benefits.

Thank you again for the post.

Mar 17, 2012

Green Tea Clears...
by: Tea Art Blog

I find your article is very informative with fascianting findings. As such, I write to seek your permission to republish this great article at my tea blog, http://teaartblog.blogspot.com so that your article can reach out to larger magnitude of people.

Your favourable reply is greatly appreciated.

Thanks and cheers,

James Oh

Mar 25, 2012

In reply to James Oh
by: Jane

James, for search engine reasons, it is counterproductive to duplicate articles on the Internet - Google, for instance, will eventually penalise the copied article by removing it from the search results, and will possibly penalise the original article as well. Because of this, I cannot give you permission to copy the article.

However, the information from research that the article contains raises a great many more questions, and I'd encourage you to read this and other similar research on green tea and raise your own queries and formulate different possibilities using your own knowledge and experience of the properties of green tea.

Many thanks for your complients,

Jane

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