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Theaflavin indicates protection on vascular endothelium via hydrogen sulfide production

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Abstract

Background

Tea polyphenols have different beneficial effects on vascular endothelium through the controlled production of nitric oxide (NO), regulation of cell proliferation, and antioxidant system. Recently, hydrogen sulfide (H2S) has been proposed as the gaseous signaling molecule in the vascular endothelium. In this study, we investigated the differences in biological functions with tea polyphenols through NO and H2S production in vascular endothelium.

Objective

Providing high potential therapeutic effect on vascular endothelium with theaflavin.

Results

Theaflavin significantly stimulated H2S production in vascular endothelial cells (VECs) by 1.51-fold compared to the control, while EGCG showed no effect. Both EGCG and theaflavin increased NO production (1.63 and 2.16-fold vs control), eNOS (1.45- and 1.74-fold vs control), p-eNOS (1.41-, 2.01-fold vs control), wound healing (1.30- and 1.75-fold vs control), and oxidative stress-induced reduction of cell viability (89.0 and 94.0% vs control). The potency of theaflavin was found to be higher than that of EGCG. Upon treatment with 100 μM DL-propargylglycine (PPG) to inhibit cystathionine-γ-lyase activity, all cell responses were suppressed in both EGCG and theaflavin treatments, and the reduction rate in the theaflavin treatment was higher than that of the control and EGCG treatments in all responses.

Conclusion

These results indicate that the protective effect of VECs is dependent on NO production and that both EGCG and theaflavin have therapeutic potential for VECs. Theaflavin has a relatively higher therapeutic potential than EGCG due to its ability to increase H2S production, which in turn affects NO production and biological activity.

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Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author, S.Y., on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the Tsukuba-Plant Innovation Research Center (T-PIRC) of the University of Tsukuba for the use of a CO2 incubator and microplate reader for cell culture and fluorescence analysis of the VECs. We would like to thank Editage (www.editage.co.kr) for English language editing.

Funding

Not applicable.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Japan

    WonJune Lee, Tomoko Terada, WenQian Jiang & YiQian Zhang

  2. Faculty of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Tsukuba, 1-1-1 Tennodai, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-8577, Japan

    Hitoshi Miyazaki & Shigeki Yoshida

Authors
  1. WonJune Lee
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  2. Tomoko Terada
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  3. WenQian Jiang
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  4. YiQian Zhang
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  6. Shigeki Yoshida
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Contributions

WJL performed the entire experiment and wrote the manuscript. TT, WQJ, and YQZ performed part of the experiment and analyzed the data. HM and SY provided valuable advice and revised the manuscript. SY organized the whole study. All authors provided appropriate comments on the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Shigeki Yoshida.

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Conflict of interest

WonJune Lee declares that he has no conflicts of interest in this study. Tomoko Terada declares that she has no conflicts of interest in this study. WenQian Jiang declares that she has no conflicts of interest in this study. YiQian Zhang declares that he has no conflicts of interest in this study. Hitoshi Miyazaki declares that he has no conflicts of interest in this study. Shigeki Yoshida declares that he has no conflicts of interest in this study.

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This article does not contain any studies with humans and animals. This study was performed following institutional and national guidelines.

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Lee, W., Terada, T., Jiang, W. et al. Theaflavin indicates protection on vascular endothelium via hydrogen sulfide production. Mol. Cell. Toxicol. (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13273-023-00365-y

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