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Medicinal Effects Of Mushrooms And Their Metabolites Essay

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Mushrooms were known and consumed as food in ceremonies as far back as prehistoric times. Throughout the history, mushrooms were used in different cultures for their medicinal and tonic properties (Gunde-Cimerman, 1999). The longest tradition of using edible mushrooms for medicinal purposes is in China. Mushrooms represent a major and as yet largely untapped source of powerful new pharmaceutical products. The most significant medicinal effect of mushrooms and their metabolites that attracted the attention of the public in the recent years is their antitumour property. Many pharmaceutical substances with potent and unique properties were isolated from mushrooms and distributed worldwide. Many of them are not strictly pharmaceutical products but represent the novel class of dietary supplements of approximately 10,000 known species of mushrooms, 2000 are safe and 300 have significant pharmacological properties (Hobbs, 1995, Miles and Chang, 1997). Mushrooms are nutritional functional food and as a source of physiologically beneficial and nontoxic medicines. They have been reported to have significant pharmacological effects or physiological properties such as bio regulation, maintenance of homeostasis, regulation of biorhythm, cure of various diseases, and prevention and improvement of life threatening diseases such as cancer, cerebral stroke and heart disease. They have been also demonstrated to have effective substances for decreasing blood cholesterol, hypolipidemic,

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