Green tea review reports mood improvements, with an uncertain biological-marker result
Trials of green tea, extracts or individual compounds reported some improvements in mood symptoms. None found a statistically significant change in the biological marker studied, and participant and comparison details were not supplied.
Based on the published abstract. The full paper may contain additional methods, results and limitations.
The 30-second takeaway
The review found reports of improved depression, anxiety and stress symptoms across trials testing green tea preparations or particular compounds. It did not find statistically significant effects on the biological marker assessed. These results suggest possible symptom effects, but the abstract does not establish their magnitude, consistency across preparations or relevance to a particular patient group.
Participant characteristics, treatment durations, controls and effect sizes are absent from the abstract. Counts of studies reporting improvements cannot establish which preparation worked best or how meaningful the symptom changes were.
Different preparations and measurements
The trials examined traditional green tea, matcha, extracts and individual compounds, including L-theanine and EGCG. Mood symptoms were assessed using different tools. The summary therefore concerns varied interventions and measurements, rather than a single standardized green tea treatment.
Symptoms and the biological marker
The marker was brain-derived neurotrophic factor, abbreviated BDNF. No included study found a statistically significant effect on it. That result should remain separate from reported symptom improvements and does not prove that the marker was completely unaffected.
The original publication
The Impact of Green Tea and Its Bioactive Compounds on Mood Disorder Symptomology and Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor: A Systematic Review of Randomized Controlled Trials.
Cavanah AM, Robinson LA, Mattingly ML et al.
Biomedicines · 2025
- PubMed ID
- 40722728
- Record checked
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