Pu-erh Tea Alleviates Obesity Induced by High-Fat Diet

Background: Obesity, a global public health challenge driven by energy excess, has spurred research into natural functional ingredients with anti-obesity potential. Pu-erh tea, a traditional fermented tea, has attracted widespread attention for its reported anti-obesity effects. However, its systematic mechanisms, particularly the interactions between its bioactive components and host metabolic regulation, remain insufficiently clarified, lacking support from integrated multi-omics and phenotypic data.Objective: This study aimed to comprehensively validate the anti-obesity activity of Pu-erh tea extract (PTE) in high-fat diet (HFD)-induced obese mice and to elucidate its core mechanisms involving the metabolic remodeling of brown adipose tissue (BAT) and gut microbiota regulation through multi-dimensional experimental approaches.Study Design: C57BL/6J mice were fed an HFD to establish an obesity model and were randomly divided into an HFD control group and an HFD+PTE intervention group (with a normal chow diet group as a blank control, n=6 per group). PTE was administered via oral gavage for continuous intervention. Key experimental procedures included: 1) whole-body energy metabolism monitoring using metabolic cages; 2) morphological observation of lipid droplets in BAT; 3) transcriptomic and lipidomic analyses of BAT tissue; 4) 16S rRNA gene sequencing of fecal samples; and 5) detection of obesity-related phenotypic indicators.Key Results and Data Types: PTE intervention significantly ameliorated HFD-induced obesity without altering food intake. Core findings supported by experimental data include: 1) Metabolic phenotype data: PTE increased whole-body energy expenditure and shifted energy substrate utilization toward lipid oxidation (monitored by metabolic cages); 2) BAT functional data: PTE induced the accumulation of small-diameter lipid droplets in BAT (histological data), activated mitochondrial fatty acid beta-oxidation and the respiratory electron transport chain (transcriptomic data, to be deposited in GEO), and reduced triglyceride (TG), diglyceride (DG), and other lipid contents in BAT (lipidomic data); 3) Gut microbiota data: PTE decreased the Firmicutes/Bacteroidetes (F/B) ratio, increased the abundance of beneficial bacteria, and reduced harmful bacteria (16S rRNA sequencing data, to be deposited in SRA).Significance: This study confirms that PTE exerts anti-obesity effects by regulating BAT metabolic remodeling and gut microbiota, providing a theoretical basis for developing PTE-based anti-obesity preparations. The multi-dimensional data generated in this project (metabolic phenotype, transcriptome, lipidome, and gut microbiota) will serve as valuable resources for subsequent research on natural product-mediated metabolic regulation, facilitating the retrieval and reuse of related data by the scientific community.