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Abstract
Green tea is a popular beverage which is consumed by several people all over the world. The increasing use has adduced to its antioxidant properties. It is good to deepen the understanding of the health modulating effects of green tea consumption.This study seeks to determine whether the consumption of green tea enhances the antioxidant enzyme activities and lowers a marker of lipid peroxidation in Drosophila melanogaster. It also evaluated the survival rate of Drosophila melanogaster fed with different concentrations of green tea for duration of 21 days. Flies were maintained at 40 to a vial (20 males and 20 females) at room temperature under 12-hr light and 12hr dark cycles. Flies were fed with hot aqueous extract of Camellia Senensis (0.2mg/mL, 0.4mg/mL, 0.6mg/mL, 0.8mg/mL and 1.0mg/mL)green tea supplemented cornmeal diet. The survival rate was determined be counting both the live and dead flies daily. At the end of this treatment the data obtained were accumulated and plotted as percentage of live and dead flies and compared with controls. Also, the flies were homogenized in phosphate buffer,superoxide dismutase, catalase and malondialdehyde were determined using spectrophotometric method. The data were compared using Student’s-t-test and significant value was set at p<0.05. The survival rate of control flies was 10% while those treated with varying concentrations of tea supplemented diet were 15%, 20%, 25%, 30% and 40% respectively. The means malondialdehyde concentration of the various groups of flies fed with different concentrations of green tea were not significantly different from the control group. The Superoxide Dismutase activity of flies fedwith 0.2mg/mL green tea (6.68±3.10) was the highest, followed by those fed with 0.4mg/mL(3.55±1.46) green tea. The differences were significant (p<0.001) compared with the control group (2.34± 1.46). The activity in group 4 (2.59±0.12), group 5(2.35±0.38) and group (2.57±0.98) were not significantly different from the control group. Similarly, catalase activity in group 2 (13.9±7.37) and group 3 (10.5±2.16) were significantly higher (p<0.001) than the control group(7.02±1.42), while group 4(5.00±1.52), group 5(1.08±0.57) and group 6(2.15±0.90) were significantly lower (p<0.05) than the control group.Green tea is a potent exogenous antioxidant that helps to reduce oxidative stress by up-regulating the activities of SOD and CAT at doses of 0.2mg/mL and 0.4mg/mL.
