Green tea could fight autoimmune disorders

• Polyphenols founds in green tea may help protect the body autoimmune disorders, believes an oral biologist who has conducted extensive studies into their health promoting properties.
• Dr Stephen Hsu, a researcher at the Medical College of Georgia's School of Dentistry, suspected that there may be a link between green tea consumption and autoimmunity after noting that dry mouth, or xerostamina, an autoimmune disorder suffered by around 30 percent of elderly Americans, occurs in only one to two percent of Chinese people in the same age group.
• Autoimmune disorders occur when the immune system starts to attack the body's own tissues.
• They may be triggered by other health conditions, such as type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and Sjogren's disease, and can have debilitating and even life threatening effects.
• Dr Hsu will present the findings of his latest investigations, involving green tea's role in producing autoantigens, at the Arthritis research Conference in Atlanta this weekend.
• Autoantigens are molecules that have useful functions, but changes in their amount or location can trigger an immune response.
• The inquiry was driven by existing evidence that a polyphenol called EGCG suppresses inflammation, caused when the immune system mounts a defense to a real or perceived enemy.
• "If EGCG suppresses inflammation, it should affect the magnitude of the autoimmune response, possibly by suppressing autoantigens," said Dr Hsu.
• By studying cells in salivary glands and skin tissue, he saw that cells exposed to green tea showed RNA and protein levels indicating autoantigen levels were suppressed in these normal cells, but not in tumor cells.
• Green tea has been shown to deliver benefits for a wide range of conditions, from oral cancer to wrinkles, thanks to the presence of polyphenols that help eliminate DNA-damaging free radicals.