LPS stimulation ex vivo of such blood resulted in significant reduction in seven cytokines (Fig. 3A–H), of which five (MIP-1β, IL-1β, IL-8, MCP-1, G-CSF) were identical to those for the patients with UC. The reduction in five cytokines was IL-1β 35%, MCP-1 22%, IL-8 18%, IL-17 17% and G-CSF 14%. Despite no reduction in median levels of IL-2, there was a significant reduction (P = 0.01) from day 0 to day 12 (Fig. 3H). Because all MIP-1β values measured after LPS stimulation at day 0 were out of range (upper limit: 50,806 pg/ml), non-parametric

statistics could not be applied. Using parametric statistics (paired t-test), there was a significant reduction (30%, P = 0.01) in MIP-1β (Fig. 3A) with mean values 50,806 (day 0) Everolimus and 35,544 (day 12). When initial unstimulated baseline values for the 17 cytokines were compared in the UC and CD patient groups, there were largely similar concentrations (Tables 1 and 2, Figs. 2 and 3). Table 3 shows the comparison of baseline cytokine levels in the patients IBD versus

those of healthy volunteers before oral intake of AndoSan™. The present study demonstrates reduction in several cytokines in the serum of patients with UC and CD after 12 days’ EPZ015666 cell line intake of a Basidiomycetes mushroom extract (AndoSan™) mainly based on AbM. For the patients with UC, there also was a concomitant from reduction in levels of faecal calprotectin. Similar results showing such decline in cytokine levels have been demonstrated [18] in healthy volunteers consuming AndoSan™ in a similar experimental set-up. Collectively, the findings support

the notion of a general anti-inflammatory and stabilizing effect of AndoSan™ on cytokine release in individuals with good health or IBD. Blood samples collected from patients with IBD had to be stimulated ex vivo with LPS, a well-known stimulator of innate immune cells, to reveal significant reduction in the levels of cytokines in addition to MCP-1 in UC (Fig. 2D) and IL-8, IL-17 and IL-2 in CD (Fig. 3C,F,G). The LPS stimulation effectuated the depletion of residual cytokine production and storage capacity of the harvested peripheral blood leucocytes and thus enabled our detection of the mushroom’s total potential to decrease cytokine levels in blood. For comparison, in healthy volunteers likewise consuming AndoSan™ [18], there was a significant reduction in as many as five cytokines in unstimulated blood and in four other cytokines in LPS-stimulated blood ex vivo. From this, it can be inferred that the mushroom extract altogether reduced levels of comparable number of cytokines in healthy volunteers (n = 9) and patients with UC (n = 7) and CD (n = 7), but to a larger extent in unstimulated blood in the former healthy group.