Medicinal mushrooms have increased their popularity in the last few decades, and with that is the interest in studying them also increased tremendously. Multiple scientific studies have been published about the mushrooms’ potential in fighting off infections, supporting our mental health and digestive system, to name a few.

Lately, a few of our medicinal mushrooms also went through a cell study to see, if the mushrooms could potentially help alleviate inflammations and protect against infections.

If you want, you can skip straight to the results. For the rest, let’s dig in and look at the study in more detail.

Why we wanted to do these studies on our medicinal mushrooms?

The market of food supplements is booming, and new products are released daily. Competition is fierce, so the products need to work. We of course know our medicinal mushroom’ potential, but it’s not always easy to convince others of that.

Having scientific proof related to your dietary supplements is crucial today, as consumers are increasingly demanding that supplements have scientific proof that they truly work. For medicine this is a no-brainer; they need to have clinical studies. Cosmetic products are also heavily studied, but only recently have food supplement companies also started to do more studies on their products. And rightfully so!

So, of course we jumped at the change of having our medicinal mushrooms studied, now that we have a research company in the group.

Wait, what do we mean by a “research company”?

As you might know already, our company belongs to the contract manufacturing group 1Q Health GmbH since early this year. In April the group got another new member as the CRO (Contract Research Organization) VivaCell Biotechnology GmbH joined the group.

VivaCell specialized in in vitro and ex vivo research models to, among others, help food supplement companies to prove the health benefits of their products. To put it shortly, they test natural ingredients to determine if they have health benefits that companies would like to communicate, say, potential to reduce inflammation or anxiety. This is done in their lab with first determining a set of parameters with which one can measure whether an ingredient has the desired impact or not.

What was studied?

We chose our lion’s mane extract, agaricus subrufescens extract and cordyceps CPA³ extract to be put to the test. VivaCell’s team wanted to know if the mushrooms could alleviate or reduce inflammation and potentially protect the human body from infections.

Why inflammation, you might ask?

Studying inflammation is important, as it is present in many, many, diseases in the body. Common colds are an obvious example, but did you know that inflammation is also involved for example in skin disease psoriasis, in diabetes and in depression? Not to mention that inflammation is also heavily involved in the aging process.

So, researching how natural ingredients that potentially help alleviate inflammation is important. Luckily, VivaCell specializes in inflammation research with hundreds of publications in renowned scientific journals.

Tested parameters

The team tested the following parameters that are associated with inflammation:

• Prostaglandin E2
• Cytokines IL-6, IL-1beta, IL-10 and TNF
• The chemokines MCP1/CCL2, MIP-1?/CCL4 and IL-8

Most of the parameters are pro-inflammatory parameters, meaning reducing them is important if an ingredient should have an anti-inflammation impact. We only want to see the cytokine IL-10 increase, as it’s an anti-inflammatory parameter.

Results of the cell study on our medicinal mushroom extracts

VivaCell team tested the effect of the lion’s mane, agaricus subrufescens and cordyceps CPA³ extract on the above-mentioned parameters in both healthy and (artificially) inflamed human blood cells. Inflammation and infection is very easy to spot from the blood, so that’s why blood cells are the best to test here.

And the results were…. drum roll, please… positive!

All three extracts could reduce the inflammation parameters we wanted to see reduced, so they showed an anti-inflammatory impact. The extracts also could activate the body’s own immune system, i.e. increase anti-inflammatory parameters in a healthy cell. Thus, the medicinal mushroom extracts also have a potential immune system impact.

Now, a quick disclaimer: these results aren’t health claims and can’t be used as such. Also, an ingredient showing an impact in a lab is different from a person digesting the same ingredient. However, if there hadn’t been any impact in a lab, there wouldn’t be any impact when digested either.

Below you can take a look at the results in a visual form. Here’s also instructions on how to interpret the images:

• LPS means an infection, i.e. an infected cell
• LPS + an amount on the x-axel, such as 10µg/ml, means that the infected cell has gotten a 10µg/ml dosage of the extract
• Control means how the different parameters are present in an healthy cell that is not infected
• The parameters on the graph’s right side correspond on the parameters that were tested. From the graphs you can clearly see, which parameters were impacted the most at which dosages

Lion’s mane results

Cordyceps results

Agaricus subrufescens results

As can be seen from the graphics, all medicinal mushrooms could reduce or activate the desired parameters. All parameters weren’t necessarily impacted equally as much, but in this case it isn’t necessary. We can still say that the mushroom have a strong anti-inflammatory effect.

Well, we were certain of this beforehand, but it’s of course great to have this scientifically proven!

Now, if you are interested in medicinal mushroom with such scientific evidence to back them up, don’t hesitate to contact us.