Therapeutic potential of medicinal mushrooms - A review of bioactive compounds and clinical application
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.53992/njns.v10i3.274Keywords:
Medicinal Mushrooms, Functional Food, CancerAbstract
All through human history, mushrooms have been valued as nutritional foods. They have been extensively used as nutraceuticals and as a source for the generation of pharmaceutical-grade medicines to treat a wide variety of diseases, including cancer. During the past more than 3 decades, numerous scientific studies on medicinal mushrooms have been conducted in Japan, China, Korea, the USA, Russia, the UK, Pakistan, Turkiye, as well as other countries. A limited number of highly purified compounds derived from some of these mushrooms are now used as pharmaceutical-grade products in medicine-especially for cancer treatment. The most well-known medicinal mushrooms worldwide, both edible and inedible, include Ganoderma lucidum, Lentinus edodes, Phellinus linteus, Porio cocos, Auricularia auricula, Hericium erinaceus, Grifola frondosa, Flammulina velutipes, Pleurotus ostreatus, Trametes versicolor, Tremella fuciformis, and Schizophyllum ensemble. The regular consumption of edible mushrooms is said to offer significant health benefits. Some compounds recently isolated from these mushrooms have been found to exhibit potent immunomodulatory, antitumor, cardiovascular, antiviral, antibacterial, antiparasitic, hepatoprotective, and antidiabetic characteristics. This study provides an overview of mushrooms with medicinal potential and explores the unique health-promoting properties of some bioactive compounds derived from them.
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