Mushrooms as Immune System Boosters

Fungus to join mushrooming immune health market?

...A study from Pennsylvania State University showed white button mushrooms to be the richest source of ergothioneine. The sought after super-antioxidant is present in mushrooms at 12 times the levels of wheat germ - once thought to be the highest natural source of ergothioneine.

The new study, published in the Journal of Nutrition, suggests that the mushroom may also be able to boost both innate and acquired immune system health.

"This is the first published study showing effect of white button mushrooms on immune function," lead author Dayong Wu from Tufts University told NutraIngredients.com.

The innate immune system refers to the immune system we are born with, and is the body's first line of defence. The acquired immune system comes into action if a pathogen can get past the innate system and tailors the immune response specifically to deal with the invading organism.

The Tufts University researchers, in collaboration with researchers from China's National Institute of Communicable Disease Control and Prevention, looked at the effect of feeding C57BL/6 mice a diet containing white button mushroom powder (0, 2, or 10 per cent) for 10 weeks on both markers of innate and acquired immune system health...

Wu and co-workers reported that supplementation with the mushroom boosted the activity of natural killer (NK) cell activity, and production of tumour necrosis factor- (TNF) and interleukin-2 (IL-2)...

Source: Journal of Nutrition
June 2007, Volume 137, Pages 1472-1477
"Dietary Supplementation with White Button Mushroom Enhances Natural Killer Cell Activity in C57BL/6 Mice"
Authors: D. Wu, M. Pae, Z. Ren, Z. Guo, D. Smith and S.N. Meydani

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