Comparison with Immune-Assist™

These mushroom products are not as effective as Biobran MGN-3 at immunomodulation, but that does not stop their manufacturers from making unsubstantiated claims for them to try to ride on the back of Biobran MGN-3's popularity. AHCC®, for example, was actually a predecessor to MGN-3, developed by the same researcher Hiroaki Maeda, and yet, suddenly it has become the new generation product! (For a more detailed comparison, go to our more AHCC® comparison page.)

Immune-Assist™ is another one that is a Chinese six-mushroom combination developed as a joint project between the Government of Zhejiang Province in China and the US company Aloha Medicinals Inc. in Hawaii. The Chinese mushrooms used in this product are now grown in California. Unlike AHCC®, however, Immune-Assist™ has hardly any bone fide published clinical research behind it — their own website lists only a few small clinical studies done with the actual product, two in a Chinese hospital and one in Ghana, research that would be dismissed by most Western doctors as not being substantial enough for risking on very sick patients. And yet, reading their website you gain the false impression that this product has substantial research behind it and that it represents a breakthrough in immune system health.

Aloha Medicinals is also putting out misleading information on Biobran MGN-3 and is making unsubstantiated claims about its product in relation to MGN-3 and AHCC.

The basic premise of their argument (they have to argue because there is no research) is that they use six mushrooms in their product whereas Daiwa use only one, therefore theirs is better. This sort of facile argument is completely irrelevant because Biobran MGN-3 is actually not a mushroom product, but only uses enzymes from specific mushrooms as a means to catalyze the break down of rice bran during the manufacture of Biobran MGN-3. Once their job has been done, these enzymes are then removed from the final product, which is why those with mushroom allergies (and many people have them) can tolerate Biobran MGN-3.

Therefore, counting the mushroom species used in production is a red-herring; comparing Biobran MGN-3 with Immune-Assist™ is like comparing apples with oranges. Biobran MGN-3 is a rice bran derivative whereas Immune-Assit™ is a mushroom product (and should be strictly avoided by those with mushroom or fungal allergies). It is therefore nonsensical to compare them in terms of their mushroom content.

Here are some of their statements that Aloha Medicinals have posted on their site in the last few years (some have already been taken down as they no doubt realized they were misleading the public):

"Immune-Assist is a second-generation immunomodulator [whereas MGN-3 was a first generation product]"

From our perspective, talking about "generations" for very dissimilar products is pure marketing-speak. Mushroom combinations, similar to Immune Assist™, have been around ages, long before rice-bran products like Biobran MGN-3. So just because Aloha Medicinals have come up with a new mushroom mixture hardly deserves the "new generation" accolade. That can only rest on substantive research, which they do not have. So this is pure marketing hype.

"MGN 3 is made from this single specific polysaccharide, arabinoxylan."

MGN-3 contains many different compounds including arabinoxylan as well as other hemicelluloses and polysaccharides. In fact, arabinoxylan only makes up a small fraction of the polysaccharides in MGN-3, which has a large array of them. Daiwa have always maintained that the reason for its effectiveness and safety is precisely because it is NOT a single compound product, but a complex polysaccharide. The mistake here is to look at MGN-3 as a mushroom product and not a rice bran derivative that uses mushroom enzymes in its manufacture.

"As such a single polysaccharide, MGN 3, while it did work quite well for natural killer cell activation, had only this single effect in the immune system."

All the research on Biobran MGN-3 clearly indicates that it modulates almost all aspects of the immune system: NK, T & B cell activity, as well as cytokine production. (One of Ghoneum's latest papers shows it can even affect TNF levels.) Even the Lane Lab's label MGN-3 clearly stated on it that it was also able to modulate T and B cell activity, as well as NK cell activity. So to state that MGN-3 only stimulates NK cell activity or that it has a single effect on the immune system is seriously misleading.

"Immune-Assist [shows] far greater effectiveness in human clinical trials than any of the other single polysaccharide supplements like AHCC or MGN3."

There has been no comparison clinical trials with Immune-Assist™ and Biobran MGN-3, or between Immune-Assist™ and AHCC. Immune Assist has very little research behind it and rides mostly on hype and fallacious arguments. Making claims based on conjecture is unfair and misleading. And the little research they do have has been done in either China or Africa, research which would not be taken seriously here in the Western countries.

"Another advantage of Immune-Assist over AHCC and MGN-3 is that Immune-Assist is American Made…"

Of course they conveniently forgot to mention that the formula was developed by a joint project with the Chinese Government. So it is not quite as All-American as Aloha Medicinals Inc. would have you believe!

"Immune-Assist - the American Supplement of the 21st century!"

This sums up Aloha Medicinals - all hype and little substance!

Conclusion

When health is at stake, we need to know what a supplement can do for us, and what it cannot do for us. No marketing bull, just the facts. When we face life-and-death situations, it is best to buy supplements with a proven track record and from companies that back up their product claims with published clinical research, rather than companies trying to ride on the back of established products using only marketing hype. Daiwa Pharmaceutical is a company that invests in proper research in established hospitals and clinics in Japan and Western Countries, research that is very expensive. But they have done this because they know that quality research is in the interests of their customers, the doctors who regularly use Biobran MGN-3 and their patients that take it.