Edible Mushrooms as Potential Sources of New Hypocholesterolemic Compounds

Coronary heart disease (CHD) is the leading cause of death in the Western world after cancer according to World Health Organization. Many studies have established that high totalcholesterol levels and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol levels are risk factors for CHD and mortality. Many investigations have been carried out to explore the possibility of increasing components which have hypocholesterolemic effects in the diet. Two particular groups of substances phytosterols and β-glucans gained much attention in the last decade and there are already commercialized functional food products supplemented with plant sterols and/or derivatives (sterol-esters, stanols, etc) and specific polysaccharides mainly obtained from cereals which are able to inhibit the absorption of exogenous cholesterol. Edible mushrooms are good sources of phytosterol-like structures such as ergosterol, fungisterol and other derivatives since they were present in all mushrooms because they are constitutive compounds of the hyphae membranes. On the other hand, edible mushrooms contained polysaccharides and depending on the specie, they showed high levels of β-glucans. Apart from these compounds, some mushroom species included certain molecules that were different than lovastatin (since statins were not detected) able to impair the synthesis of endogenous cholesterol by inhibiting the HMGCoA reductase (3-hydroxy-3-methyl-glutaryl CoA reductase) the key enzyme in the cholesterol metabolism.