How AHCC works?

How can one dietary ingredient be effective against so many types of health problems?

The answer is that many acute and chronic conditions share a hidden cause: compromised immunity. And as a biological response modifier, AHCC turns the dial up on your natural immune response, helping you fight all kinds of threats to your health.

An Immune System Primer

The immune system’s job is to protect you from harm. It is always scanning your body to determine if bacteria, viruses, toxins, parasites and other pathogens have entered your system or if any of your cells have mutated and become abnormal.

You have two basic types of immunity: innate and adaptive. Your innate immunity launches an immediate, non-specific attack against a threat. Your adaptive immunity takes longer to kick in, but produces a specific response to a particular microbe.

Key Players of Innate Immunity: Your First Line of Defense

• Cytokines: Chemical messengers that help immune cells communicate and coordinate an immune response
• Natural killer (NK) cells: White blood cells (WBC) that recognize and destroy infected or abnormal cells by injecting granules into them, causing them to explode
• Macrophages: WBC that engulf and ingest bacteria and cellular debris
• Dendritic cells: WBC that present foreign substances to B and T cells, initiating an adaptive response

Key Players of Adaptive Immunity: Your Second Line of Defense

• B and T cells: Both B cells (which mature in bone marrow) and T cells (which mature in the thymus) are lymphocytes, WBC that are able to recognize previous invaders and destroy them with a specific response

Proven Benefits of AHCC

In vivo and human clinical trials have shown that AHCC modifies both the innate and adaptive immune response, by:

• Increasing the production of cytokines
• Increasing the activity of NK cells by as much as 300-800%
• Increasing populations of macrophages, in some cases doubling them
• Increasing the number of dendritic cells
• Increasing the number of T cells by as much as 200%

Research Summary

AHCC is the world’s most researched specialty immune supplement, supported by over 80 research studies. It is utilized by over 700 hospitals and healthcare facilities worldwide as a standard preventative regimen for incoming patients to reduce the risk of hospital infections.

For a quick summary of the research to date on a particular condition, click on the tab for that condition. To see actual scientific abstracts, visit the Research page.

Infection

In vivo research has shown that AHCC modulates the immune response against a variety of infectious agents, including influenza virus (the common flu), avian influenza virus (“bird flu”), Klebsiella pneumoniae bacteria (which causes pneumonia), Candida albicans fungus (which causes yeast infections), Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacteria (which can infect any part of the body), and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus bacteria (or MSRA, which causes an antibiotic-resistant staph infection). Most recently, AHCC was found to boost protective immune response specific to the West Nile Virus in mice.
Studies have repeatedly shown that mice treated with AHCC prior to infection with these pathogens experience:

• Decreased severity of infection
• Shortened recovery time
• Increased survival

In fact, one study found that mice pretreated with AHCC before infection with K. pneumoniae had completely cleared the bacteria from their systems by day 6, whereas control mice had increased levels of the bacteria and became extremely sick.

Cancer

AHCC has been used with great success in cancer patients. Data from the treatment of over 100,000 individuals with various types of cancer have shown AHCC treatment to be of benefit in 60% of cases. (Kenner p. 15) AHCC is particularly effective for liver, lung, stomach, colon, breast, thyroid, ovarian, testicular, tongue, kidney and pancreatic cancers. (Kenner p. 15)

One landmark AHCC trial enrolled 269 patients with liver cancer. Following surgery, about half of the patients took AHCC and about half did not. The results were dramatic: At the end of the ten-year study, only 34.5% of the AHCC patients experienced a recurrence in their cancer, compared with 66.1% of the control group. Similarly, while 46.8% of the patients in the control group had died at the end of ten years, less than half that amount — 20.4% — of those in the AHCC group had. Another study found that AHCC not only prolonged survival of advanced liver cancer patients, it also improved various parameters of quality of life, including mental stability, general physical health status and the ability to have normal activities.

Side Effects of Chemotherapy

Chemotherapy is fraught with side effects, which range from psychologically distressing to life-threatening. In addition to being able to fight cancer directly, AHCC also alleviates many of the side effects of chemotherapy, including:

• Hair Loss: Doctors noticed that chemotherapy patients taking AHCC did not lose their hair. Subsequently, an in vivo study found that mice treated with AHCC were protected from chemically induced hair loss.
• Nausea: Clinical studies in Korea and Japan have indicated that AHCC remarkably improves symptoms of nausea and vomiting in cancer patients. (Kenner, p. 18)
• Bone Marrow Suppression: Chemotherapy can inhibit bone marrow function, which is life-threatening because the body’s key immune soldiers — the white blood cells — originate in bone marrow. AHCC has been shown to raise the white blood cell count of cancer patients by about 30%. (Kenner, p. 17)
• Liver Damage: One of the major drawbacks of chemotherapy is that it kills healthy cells in addition to cancer cells. An in vivo study found that while rats given chemotherapy experienced large increases in liver enzymes (indicative of liver damage), those given chemotherapy plus AHCC had normal levels. (Kenner, p. 17)

Liver Ailments

Dr. Fred Pescatore, of the Center for Integrative and Complementary Medicine in New York, has reported that he has achieved marked reductions in the liver enzymes of hepatitis patients through the use of AHCC. This is an important discovery, as high levels of liver enzymes are indicative of liver damage. Dr. Pescatore has also observed massive drops in the viral loads of hepatitis C patients. One case study, a 47 year-old male, had a viral load of 2,498,200 before treatment, which plunged to 499,600 after six months on AHCC — an 80% reduction.

Animal studies confirm AHCC’s liver-protective effect. Rats treated with AHCC and then administered the liver-toxic chemical carbon tetrachloride were spared from its liver-damaging effect. Similarly, rats treated with AHCC and then administered the lethal substance galactosamine had an improved survival rate compared to control rats. (Kenner, p. 19)

Diabetes

AHCC appears to have several benefits for diabetics. A small human clinical trial conducted in Japan found that all 13 diabetic patients enrolled in the study experienced a significant drop in blood glucose and glycohemoglobin levels after taking AHCC for six months. (Kenner, p. 21)

AHCC’s blood-sugar lowering effect was also observed in animal research. Diabetes was induced in rats through injection with the chemical streptozotocin (STZ). Among untreated (control) animals, blood glucose levels increased, insulin levels decreased, and insulin-secreting cells were damaged. Among AHCC-treated rats, however, blood glucose levels decreased, insulin levels increased, and there was little damage to insulin-secreting cells.

Cardiovascular Disease

AHCC was first developed as a treatment for hypertension, so it’s not surprising that several doctors have reported on its positive impact on cardiovascular health. Dr. Fred Pescatore, of the Center for Integrative and Complementary Medicine in New York, reported that AHCC can prevent stress-induced high blood pressure and damage to the heart. Dr. M. Iwamoto of the En-Zan-Kai Medical Corporation reported that AHCC has a beneficial influence on ventricular arrhythmias, a type of heart disorder in which the heart rhythm is disrupted. (Kenner, p. 21)

Stress

It is widely recognized that stress plays a major role in the etiology of many diseases. When people and animals are under stress, several things happen: the production of stress hormones such as adrenalin and corticosteroids increases, uric acid production increases, and blood sugar rise. A study in rats that had been stressed through immobilization found that AHCC mediated the stress response, keeping levels of stress hormones, uric acid, and blood sugar normal.

Other in vivo studies have shown that as a potent antioxidant, AHCC may also protect against disorders caused by oxidative stress (cellular stress caused by free radicals).

Inflammation

While many people associate inflammation with arthritis, few realize it is one of the underlying contributors to a number of different diseases, from asthma to heart disease to Alzheimer’s. In acute situations, such as sickness or injury, inflammation is helpful because it helps the body eliminate pathogens. When inflammation becomes chronic, however, it can destroy healthy tissue. Research shown that AHCC has a profound anti-inflammatory effect.