Dear Friends of AHP,



We wanted to make you aware of the following study that was just published online in BMC Immunology. The study, conducted by our friends at Host Defense (Paul Stamets and team), used their agaricus-turkey tail product in conjunction with mRNA vaccines. The researchers concluded the product decreased side effects of the vaccine while potentially increasing antibody response for up to six months and suggested its potential value in future pandemics. This study will be followed by a second study for the treatment of COVID-19 that hopefully will be published in the near future.

This is possibly one of the only studies in existence that investigated the potential benefits of medicinal mushroom products with vaccines and is a milestone in herbal medicine research. Papers such as this are often not published in primary medical literature due to the inherent negative biases that exist in many editorial processes.

We offer our congratulations to the researchers and to Host Defense as the sponsors. The paper and Stamets Ted Talks can be accessed at the following links:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12865-026-00809-9

https://paulstamets.com/ted-talks

Sincerely,

Roy Upton, RH, Di Ayu

American Herbal Pharmacopoeia®