Lipid-clearing tea aqueous extract alleviates dyslipidaemia <i>in vivo</i> and <i>in vitro</i> by activating the AMPK pathway

Diseases such as dyslipidemia caused by lipid accumulation have gradually become one of the most damaging underlying threats to human health. Lipid Clearing Tea (LCT) is a kind of functional food formulated with four homology of medicine and food, and it includes hawthorn, cassia seed, chrysanthemum, and green tea, containing a variety of natural hypolipidemic functional and active ingredients. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of Lipid-clearing Tea Aqueous Extract (LCTAE) on alleviating dyslipidemia in an <i>in vivo</i> rat model induced by high-fat diet (HFD), and in an <i>in vitro</i> HepG2 cell model induced by oleic acid (OA) through examining biochemical indices, pathologic features, and protein expressions. The result of experiments <i>in vivo</i> showed that LCTAE ameliorated the abnormalities of biochemical indices in the serum, the accumulation of lipids in liver tissues, and reversed the expression of AMPK/FAS pathway proteins in rats. The results of <i>in vitro</i> experiments showed that LCTAE could significantly reduce the levels of TC and TG in OA-induced HepG2 cells compared with the OA group (<i>P</i> &lt; 0.01), decrease intracellular lipid accumulation, and activate the activity of phosphorylated AMPK, which could regulate the AMPK/SREBP1c/FAS/ACC pathway and improve dyslipidemia. The above results indicate that LCTAE is beneficial to the improvement of dyslipidemia; thus, providing a theoretical basis for the development of functional food formulated with LCT and extending possibilities for the prevention and treatment of dyslipidemia and related metabolic diseases.