Interactions of tea polysaccharides with gut microbiota and their health-promoting effects to host: Advances and perspectives

Tea has been used medicinally and dietarily for thousands of years. Tea polysaccharides (TPS), considered one of the main bioactive components of tea, show diverse health benefits. Yet it has received far less attention than tea polyphenols. During recent decades, considerable researches have been dedicated to TPS, including extraction, structural characteristics, and potential bioactivity. Recent studies suggested that the biological effects of dietary TPS are subjected to gut microbiota (GM) modulation. Thus, this review focuses on recent research advance on the structure characteristics of TPS, TPS degradation in the gut, TPS modulation on the diversity of GM and production of short chain fatty acids (SCFAs), and the health benefits of TPS through targeting GM. Furthermore, some future research directions were also proposed. The purpose of this review is to enhance our understanding the health-promoting properties of TPS and to promote further researches on the TPS.