Mushrooms: A Potential Natural Source of Anti-Inflammatory Compounds for Medical Applications

Abstract

For centuries, macrofungi have been used as food and medicine in different parts of the world. This is mainly attributed to their nutritional value as a potential source of carbohydrates, proteins, amino acids, and minerals. In addition, they also include many bioactive metabolites which make mushrooms and truffles common components in folk medicine, especially in Africa, the Middle East, China, and Japan. The reported medicinal effects of mushrooms include anti-inflammatory effects, with anti-inflammatory compounds of mushrooms comprising a highly diversified group in terms of their chemical structure. They include polysaccharides, terpenoids, phenolic compounds, and many other low molecular weight molecules. The aims of this review are to report the different types of bioactive metabolites and their relevant producers, as well as the different mechanisms of action of mushroom compounds as potent anti-inflammatory agents.

Laetiporus sulphureus (Bull.: Fr.) Murr. as Food as Medicine

“…Till date, treatments are not able to solve these disorders suggesting finding of new antiinflammatory therapeutic compounds. 65 To discover biologically active antiinflammatory compounds from wood rotting fungi, Saba et al (2015) have isolated a triterpene, LSM-H7, from fruiting bodies of L. sulphureus var. miniatus inhabiting in Mt.…”

High-Throughput Screening Platform for the Discovery of New Immunomodulator Molecules from Natural Product Extract Libraries

“…3 Interestingly, the 3 prominent categories of natural product compounds identified from these reviews (poliphenolics, terpenoids, and fatty acids) are commonly produced in microbial fermentations. 4 The bioactivities of these classes of compounds are exhibited through the down-regulation of different types of inflammatory mediators, highlighting the importance of microbial fermentations as potential biofactories for the production of natural anti-inflammatory metabolites of highly diversified chemical structures. The possibility of obtaining them by scaling up the fermentations of the producing microbial strain is an additional advantage that microbial natural products offer when compared with natural compounds from other sources.…”

A Comprehensive Review on Food and Medicinal Prospects of Astraeus hygrometricus

“…Inflammation is regarded as the complex biological response to expel injury or harmful stimuli such as pathogens, damaged cells or irritation 89 and found to be involved in the development of several chronic diseases such as arthritis, arteriosclerosis, obesity, diabetes, neurodegenerative diseases and cancer. 90 The nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs that are commonly administrated to reduce inflammation in the body have shown to possess significant side effects.…”