2020 Volume 31 Issue 2 Pages 99-104
Awa-bancha, a traditional tea in Tokushima, Japan, is produced by immersing boiled tea leaves in a tub containing microorganisms and allowing fermentation. In the present study, tea fermentation was prepared with Lactobacillus pentosus OLL203984 isolated from Awa-bancha pickle solution and the effect of this tea fermentation on bowel function and gut microbiota was evaluated in Ncx/Hox11L.1-deficient (Ncx-/-) mice presenting with delayed gastrointestinal transit time. Ncx-/- mice were orally administered tea fermentation or water as a control for 4 weeks.
Gastrointestinal transit time was significantly shorter in mice that ingested tea fermentation than those that ingested water, whereas there was no significant between-group difference in fecal water content. Fecal Bacteroidales and Closridiales decreased significantly, while Lactobacillales and Bifidobacteriales increased significantly, and Shannon index, which is one of the indices used to measure alpha diversity, decreased significantly, after ingestion of tea fermentation. In contrast, these bacterial proportion and Shannon index were unchanged in the control group. The level of colonic expression of iNOS mRNA, which encodes a protein involved in bowel motility, tended to be lower in the tea fermentation-treated than in the control group. These results suggest that ingestion of tea fermented with L.
pentosus OLL203984 alters gut microbiota composition and ameliorates delayed gastrointestinal transit time.
