Study links mushroom extract to improved aerobic measures in male athletes
A small, uncontrolled study associated 40 days of mushroom-extract supplementation with improved aerobic measures in 50 male athletes. The authors said the preliminary results could not establish cause and effect.
A study published in Antioxidants on Oct. 26 associated 40 days of a β-glucan-rich mushroom extract with higher aerobic-performance measures in 50 male athletes.1,2
The uncontrolled, single-arm pilot included healthy men aged 18–22 who took 320 mg daily; it had no control group, placebo, randomization or blinding. After supplementation, researchers reported a 14.8% increase in relative VO₂ and a 54.9-second increase in time to exhaustion.1,2
The authors said the findings were hypothesis-generating and could not establish causality, and noted that only 22 of 50 baseline exercise tests met the study’s maximality criteria.2
