Exotic Mushrooms Reduce Arthritis

STILLWATER, OKWhite button mushroom (WBM) and shitake mushroom appear to reduce arthritis by targeting inflammatory markers, but in their online ahead of print report in the Journal of Nutrition, the Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, research team noted this is early study that needs to be elucidated by additional future research.

While exotic mushrooms have been used in ancient Chinese medicine for immune health issues, WBM is the most common mushroom in the American diet, but has only limited data on its health benefits, according to researchers. They investigated the effects of WBM and shiitake mushrooms on collagen-induced arthritis (CIA) using a 2 x 3 factorial design in 64 mice (eight-week-old, female, dilute brown, non-agouti) that were fed either a control diet (n = 37) or the same diet supplemented with 5 percent lyophilized WBM or SM (n = 27) for six weeks. CIA was induced by immunizing mice with 100 µg bovine collagen followed by 50 µg LPS on d 20 post-collagen injection. They assessed CIA using mononuclear cell infiltration, bone erosion, plasma IL-6, TNF, and intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (sICAM-1) concentrations.

At 31 days after collagen injection, WBM and SM tended to reduce the CIA index (from 5.11 ± 0.82 to 3.15 ± 0.95), compared with the control diet. Only 23 percent of WBM mice and 29 percent of shitake mice had a CIA index greater than 7, compared to 58 percent of control mice showing such index scores. The researchers reported CIA index was positively correlated with sICAM1 (r = 0.55; P < 0.05) but negatively correlated with TNF (r = 0.34; P < 0.05). Further, both mushroom groups had reduced plasma TNF (34 percent in WBM; 64 percent in shitake), but only shitake mice experienced increased plasma IL-6 by 1.3-fold. The researchers noted this is the first report demonstrating a possible health benefit of WBM in arthritis treatment, but whether mushrooms are beneficial for arthritis management will need to be confirmed by future studies.