Abstract 138: The Use of β-1.3/1.6-D-Glucan as Complementary Therapy for Cardiovascular Diseases

Abstract

Cardiovascular disease nowadays is still the one silent killer over the world.So far, current standard therapies for cardiovascular diseases do not reach expected results such as the improving heart function by rehabilitating the damaged cardiomyocytes For thousands of years Ganoderma lucidum extract has been used as herbal therapy for various types of diseases, including cardiovascular diseases. An International Publication No. WO 2005/084692 A2 with the title Effect of Glucan on Stem Cell Recruitment and Tissue Repair mentions that “ the orally administered glucan enhances proliferation, activation and differentiation of committed stem progenitor cells by functioning with the complement system by providing a second signal for CR3 activation .” Furthermore, it is also discussed that “ the committed stem cells are selected from the group consisting of committed stem cells from the liver, heart, muscle, kidney and neural tissue .” In 1995 we began a research on β-D-Glucan derived from the purified extract of East-Java Indonesian Ganoderma lucidum mycelia.At the end of 2009 we have the first clinical experience the use of our β-1.3/1.6-D-Glucan for cardiovascular diseases patient. A bypass surgery patient who was also a candidate for heart transplant experienced a good clinical result after 8 months use of our beta glucan with dose of 3 x 200 mg beta glucan a day. A significant improvement of Ejection Fraction (EF) was reached from 22% to 44%. Previously, when he only took standard drug therapy for cardiovascular disease after bypass surgery, the improvement of EF was not significant (from 13% as baseline to 22%).This result also applied to 4 other patients. We presumed that this specific Ganoderma lucidum β-D-Glucan has similar mechanism of actions as mentioned in the above publication and also in a journal Modulating Toll-like receptor mediated signaling by(1-3)-β-D-glucan rapidly induces cardioprotection . The conclusion is β-D-Glucan could serve as a complementary therapy in cardiovascular diseases but it still needs further investigations through in vitro / in vivo assays and clinical trials.