EVALUATING THE EFFECT OF DAILY CONSUMPTION OF ORANGE PEKOE TEA ON SERUM IRON STATUS IN WISTAR ALBINO RATS

Tea as a beverage has been shown to possess numerous therapeutic and nutritional properties. The orange pekoe tea is one of the major tea types and is consumed highly in Asia, Africa and Europe. This study evaluated the effect of daily consumption of orange pekoe tea on serum iron level in wistar albino rats. The animals received a daily orange pekoe tea oral administration at a dosage of 150ml/kg. the animals were sacrificed after 21 days and their diluted serum used to determine iron status using an atomic absorption spectrophotometer. Orange pekoe tea hasn’t really been considered as a weight gain inhibitor but studies have proven that it could possess such potential since it contains polyphenols not as much as green tea though. These polyphenols have the ability to inhibit weight gain since they can reduce the absorption of cholesterol (Leong et al., 2014). In this study, there was a gradual increase in average weight in both groups except on the 21st day in the orange pekoe tea group. The control had a 8.16% average percentage increase in weight on the last day of the experiment while the orange pekoe tea group had a 4% reduction in weight. There was also no significant increase in weight (p>0.05) when the initial and final weights of the orange pekoe tea group were compared. The reverse was the case in the control group (p<0.05). This results show that the orange pekoe tea has weight gain modulation potential. Markers for iron deficiency anemia include: serum iron, transferring saturation and serum ferritin. Conclusions on onset of iron deficiency anemia cannot be made under low concentrations of just one of the analytes except serum ferritin. Serum iron, though, is also a good marker but is more trusted alone at normal levels with significant difference from standards or controls. The control group had a higher serum iron level than the black tea group. This difference wasn’t significant (p>0.05). This shows that the daily controlled consumption of orange pekoe tea doesn’t inhibit absorption of iron from exogenous sources and also doesn’t affect the intracellular iron stores adversely. It is therefore recommended that more research should be channeled towards finding out the effect of daily orange pekoe tea consumption on iron status involving other iron status specific markers.