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Journal of Tea Science ›› 2021, Vol. 41 ›› Issue (2): 143-158.doi: 10.13305/j.cnki.jts.2021.02.001

• Review •     Next Articles

The Antiviral Properties of Tea

XIONG Ligui, LIU Sihui, HUANG Jian'an*, LIU Zhonghua*   

  1. National Research Center of Engineering and Technology for Utilization of Botanical Functional Ingredients, Key Lab of Education Ministry for Tea Science, Co-Innovation Center of Education Ministry for Utilization of Botanical Functional Ingredients, Hunan Agricultural University, Changsha 410128, China
  • Received:2020-03-06 Revised:2020-12-27 Online:2021-04-15 Published:2021-04-13

Abstract: Tea (Camellia sinensis) is known as a global health beverage, and global tea consumption increases due to its biological activities. In the last 30 years, antiviral activities of tea and its components, especially tea polyphenols, with different modes of action were demonstrated on diverse families of viruses, such as influenza virus, coronavirus, hepatitis virus, and human immunodeficiency virus, etc. This review summarized the current knowledge on the antiviral activities of tea and its components. Most of these studies demonstrated antiviral properties of tea and its components by in vitro biochemical or cell experiments with little rodent and clinical studies. Therefore, it is still unclear whether the antiviral effects of daily tea consumption are available. More large-scale randomized intervention and epidemiological/clinical studies are needed to confirm clinical efficacy of tea and its components.

Key words: tea, functional components, virus, antiviral activities

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