Regulatory T-cell modulation by green tea in chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

Regulatory T cells (Tregs) are considered to be key immunomodulatory cells of the immune system and are increased in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). Rai stage 0 identifies patients with early stage CLL for which there is no effective intervention at the present time and a "wait and see" policy is usually adopted. Some biological and clinical studies have reported that green tea constituents, such as epigallocatechin-gallate (EGCG), have antitumor effects on hematologic malignancies including CLL. We report data on a clinical trial in which green tea extracts were given orally to 12 patients with stage 0 CLL and 12 healthy subjects. Ten patients and 10 controls completed the 6-month scheduled therapy. Two patients and 2 controls stopped therapy within 1 month because of tachycardia and epigastralgia. Eight out 10 evaluable patients (80 percent) showed a reduction of lymphocytosis and absolute number of circulating Tregs, as well. One patient (10 percent) had a stabilization of lymphocytosis and a reduction of Tregs, and 1 patient (10 percent) showed an increase of both lymphocytosis and Tregs. Only the non-responding patient progressed after 5 months from the end of green tea administration and chemotherapy was given. Interestingly, both IL-10 and TGF-beta serum levels declined throughout the green tea intake period, in both patients and controls. These data seem to indicate that green tea is able to modulate circulating Tregs in CLL patients with early stage of the disease. This can result in the control of lymphocytosis as well as in the prevention of disease progression.

Metabolomic fingerprinting of plant extracts.

The standardization and quality control of plant extracts is an important topic, in particular, when such extracts are used for medicinal purposes. Consequently, the development of fast and effective analytical methods for metabolomic fingerprinting of plant extracts is of high interest. In this investigation, electrospray mass spectrometry (ESI-MS) and (1)H NMR techniques were employed with further statistical analyses of the acquired data. The results showed that negative ion mode ESI-MS is particularly effective for characterization of plant extracts. Different samples of the same species appear well-clustered and separated from the other species. To verify the effectiveness of the method, two other batches of extracts from a species, in which the principal components were already identified (Cynara scolymus), were analyzed, and the components that were verified by the principal component analysis (PCA) were found to be within the region identified as characteristic of Cynara Scolymus extracts. The data from extracts of the other species were well separated from those pertaining to the species previously characterized. Only the case of a species that was strictly correlated from a botanical point of view, with extracts that were previously analyzed, showed overlapping.