ReviewChinese medicine2020
Herb-drug interactions between the medicinal mushrooms Lingzhi and Yunzhi and cytotoxic anticancer drugs: a systematic review.
Review in Chinese medicine, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
What it found
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 22 citations in OpenAlex.
- Docetaxel Oral Delivery System Using Natural Nanoparticles Derived from Ganoderma: Enhanced Pharmacokinetics, Potent Cytotoxicity, and Macrophage-Activating Properties.Pharmaceuticals (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Antioxidant and Anti-Inflammatory Properties of Mushroom-Based Food Additives and Food Fortified with Them-Current Status and Future Perspectives.Antioxidants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- The Emerging Role of Oyster Mushrooms as a Functional Food for Complementary Cancer Therapy.Foods (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Bibliometric analysis of traditional Chinese medicine in cancer treatment via immune system modulation (2015-2025).Frontiers in immunology · 2025Article
- Medicinal Mushrooms in Metastatic Breast Cancer: What Is Their Therapeutic Potential as Adjuvant in Clinical Settings?Current issues in molecular biology · 2024Review
- Triterpenoids fromFrontiers in pharmacology · 2024Article
- Review
- Evaluation of Concomitant Use of Anticancer Drugs and Herbal Products: From Interactions to Synergic Activity.Cancers · 2022Article
- Antitumor, Immunomodulatory and Antiangiogenic Efficacy of Medicinal Mushroom Extract Mixtures in Advanced Colorectal Cancer Animal Model.Molecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundLingzhi and Yunzhi are medicinal mushrooms commonly used with cytotoxic chemotherapy in cancer patients in Asian countries. The current systematic review aims to identify potential pharmacokinetic or pharmacodynamic interactions from the existing literature to ensure their effective and safe combination usage in cancer patients.
methodsA systematic search was conducted on nine major Chinese and English databases, including China Journal Net, Allied and Complementary Medicine Database, and Ovid MEDLINE
resultsThis search identified 213 studies, including 77 clinical studies that reported on the combined use of cytotoxic drugs with Yunzhi (n = 56) or Lingzhi (n = 21). Majority of these clinical studies demonstrated modest methodological quality. In clinical practice, the most commonly used cytotoxic drugs with Lingzhi were cisplatin, 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) and paclitaxel, whereas Tegafur/uracil (UFT)/Tegafur, 5-FU, and mitomycin were the ones used more often with Yunzhi. Only two clinical pharmacokinetic studies were available showing no significant interactions between Polysaccharide K (PSK) and Tegafur. From the pharmacodynamic interactions perspective, combination uses of Yunzhi/Lingzhi with cytotoxic drugs in clinical practice could lead to improvement in survival (n = 31) and quality of life (n = 17), reduction in tumor lesions (n = 22), immune modulation (n = 38), and alleviation of chemotherapy-related side effects (n = 14) with no reported adverse effects.
conclusionOur findings suggest that the clinical combination use of Lingzhi or Yunzhi with cytotoxic drugs could enhance the efficacy and ameliorate the adverse effects of cytotoxic drugs, leading to improved quality of life in cancer patients. More high quality clinical studies including pharmacokinetic herb-drug interactions studies are warranted to verify these observations and mechanisms involved. Based on the high quality clinical data, pharmacoepidemiology methods and bioinformatics or data mining could be adopt for further identification of clinical meaningful herb-drug interactions in cancer therapies.
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