Tea Polyphenols Enhanced the Antioxidant Capacity and Induced Hsps to Relieve Heat Stress Injury

Keap1-Nrf2-ARE and heat shock proteins (Hsps) are important endogenous protection mechanisms initiated by heat stress to play a double protective role for cell adaptation and survival. H9C2 cells and 80 300-day-old specific pathogen-free chickens were randomly divided into the control and tea polyphenol groups and used to establish a heat stress model in vitro and in vivo. This task was conducted to explore the protection and mechanism of tea polyphenols in relieving thermal injury. A supplement with 10 μg/mL tea polyphenols could effectively relieve the heat damage of H9C2 cells at 42°C. Accordingly, weaker granular degeneration, vacuolar degeneration, and nucleus deep staining were shown. A strong antioxidant capacity was manifested in the upregulation of the total antioxidant capacity (T-AOC) (at 5 h, P