Traditionally, the Coriolus Versicolor mushroom has been used in China
for several thousands of years because of it's immune boosting capabilities. It's recorded usage in history dates back to mid 1300's during the Ming dynasty. In the 1970s researchers in Japan started experimenting with the mushroom by extracting it's essence. The protein bound polysaccharide that was isolated from the mushroom is called Polysaccharide –K (Krestin, PSK). Their research found that PSK is effective as an immune system boosting agent. It is used in some European countries as well as China and in Japan, PSK is prescribed in conjunction with chemotherapy and is covered by their government health insurance. PSK has documented immune boosting activity in vitro, in vivoin human clinical trials.
Human clinical trials show PSK can maintain health and wellness. In the 1980's, Chinese researchers conducted further studies and were able to isolate a muchmore potent strain using a different, alcohol based extraction process. The result was Polysaccharide peptide or PSP. In the United States, top ranked hospital and research institutes have reported that Coriolus Versicolor, PSK and PSP helps boost the body's own immune systems with limited side effects and safety of daily oral doses for extended periods of time." In addition, Coriolus Versicolor and its potential positiveeffects has been studied very closely by MD Anderson, University of Texas, Loma Linda University, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School) , The University of San Diego, Sloan-Kettering Center (New York), and Bastyr University (Kenmore, Washington) just to name a few.Worldwide, there have been over 400 animal and human studies on the subject with over a dozen, placebo based human trials conducted in the west. |