Hawk tea prevents high-fat diet-induced obesity in mice by activating the AMPK/ACC/SREBP1c signaling pathways and regulating the gut microbiota

Abstract

<i>Scope</i>: Hawk tea, a non-Camellia tea, is an ancient tea drink from southwest China and has been proven to exhibit significant hypoglycaemic and lipid-lowering effects. The aim of this study was to evaluate whether Hawk tea extract (HTE) can improve obesity induced by a high-fat diet (HFD) in a mouse model and to determine whether its anti-obesity effects are related to improvements in lipid metabolism and the gut microbiota. <i>Methods and results</i>: We tested the ability of HTE to prevent obesity and regulate gut microbiota in C57BL/6J mice fed with a HFD. We found that HTE significantly reduced body weight, fat deposition, serum triglyceride (TG), total cholesterol (TC) and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) levels, and significantly increased serum levels of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) induced by HFD. HTE also increased the levels of AMPK and ACC phosphorylation, up-regulated the expression of CPT-1, and downregulated the expression of SREBP1c and FAS. In addition, the administration of HTE significantly altered the composition of the gut microbiota, reduced the ratio of <i>Firmicutes</i> to <i>Bacteroidetes</i>, increased the relative abundance of <i>Akkermansia muciniphila</i>, <i>Bacteroides-vulgatus</i>, and <i>Faecalibaculum_rodentium</i>, and decreased the relative abundance of <i>Desulfovibrionaceae</i> and <i>Lachnospiraceae</i>. <i>Conclusions</i>: Collectively, our data demonstrate that HTE can prevent HFD-induced obesity by regulating the AMPK/ACC/SREBP1c signaling pathways and the gut microbiota.