Influenza is a potentially lethal infectious disease that weakens its victims by inflicting a high fever. In recent years, the spread of bird influenza has imposed major damages on those in the poultry farming business, and threatens to cross over to human transmission. At the root of these problems is the Influenza virus. Unlike bacteria that can exist on their own, viruses are not organisms and cannot live independently, but exist and grow in host organisms.

The influenza virus has surface spikes with proteins at the end. These proteins stick to human or bird oral mucosa cells and cause infection. This means that we can prevent influenza infection by blocking the protein bound spikes. Tea catechins bind easily with proteins, and can prevent influenza infection by binding with the protein bound spikes before they adhere to the mucosa and therefore inactivate the virus.

Graph (A) shows the inactivating effect of EGCg (a tea catechin) on the influenza virus. It was confirmed that the ability of the virus to infect the cells is lost when a low concentration EGCg solution comes in contact with a solution containing a few hundred viruses. Under an electron microscope (B), we can see virus particles forming an aggregation.