Lipid-clearing tea aqueous extract alleviates dyslipidaemia in vivo and in vitro by activating the AMPK pathway

Diseases such as dyslipidemia caused by lipid accumulation have gradually become one of the most damaging underlying threats to human health. Lipid Clearing Tea (LCT) is a kind of functional food formulated with four homology of medicine and food, and it includes hawthorn, cassia seed, chrysanthemum, and green tea, containing a variety of natural hypolipidemic functional and active ingredients. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of Lipid-clearing Tea Aqueous Extract (LCTAE) on alleviating dyslipidemia in an in vivo rat model induced by high-fat diet (HFD), and in an in vitro HepG2 cell model induced by oleic acid (OA) through examining biochemical indices, pathologic features, and protein expressions. The result of experiments in vivo showed that LCTAE ameliorated the abnormalities of biochemical indices in the serum, the accumulation of lipids in liver tissues, and reversed the expression of AMPK/FAS pathway proteins in rats. The results of in vitro experiments showed that LCTAE could significantly reduce the levels of TC and TG in OA-induced HepG2 cells compared with the OA group (P < 0.01), decrease intracellular lipid accumulation, and activate the activity of phosphorylated AMPK, which could regulate the AMPK/SREBP1c/FAS/ACC pathway and improve dyslipidemia. The above results indicate that LCTAE is beneficial to the improvement of dyslipidemia; thus, providing a theoretical basis for the development of functional food formulated with LCT and extending possibilities for the prevention and treatment of dyslipidemia and related metabolic diseases.