Ergothioneine – a diet‐derived antioxidant with therapeutic potential
Open accessAbstract
Ergothioneine is a thiol/thione molecule synthesised only by some fungi and bacteria. Nonetheless, it is avidly taken up from the diet by humans and other animals through a transporter, OCTN 1, and accumulates to high levels in certain tissues. Ergothioneine is not rapidly metabolised, or excreted in urine and is present in many, if not all, human tissues and body fluids. Ergothioneine has powerful antioxidant and cytoprotective properties in vitro and there is evidence that the body may concentrate it at sites of tissue injury by raising OCTN 1 levels. Decreased blood and/or plasma levels of ergothioneine have been observed in some diseases, suggesting that a deficiency could be relevant to the disease onset or progression. This brief Review explores the possible roles of ergothioneine in human health and disease.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Tempeh contains high levels of ERG.
“Note too that tempe(h), the result of a solid substrate Rhizopus oligosporus fermentation(310–314), also contains high levels of ERG(6).”
From The biology of ergothioneine, an antioxidant nutraceutical (2020) · cites this paper as [6]
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
The citation lists haven’t been fetched yet
References 100 · Cited by 305
- Authors
- Halliwell, B., Cheah, I. K., & Tang, R. M. Y.
- Affiliations
- National University of Singapore (SG)
- Corresponding author
- Halliwell, Barry
- Venue
- FEBS Letters
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2018-06-15
- Volume
- 592
- Issue
- 20
- Pages
- 3357-3366
- ISSN
- 0014-5793 (ISSN-L)
- 1873-3468
- OpenAlex
- W2805942784
- Cited by
- 305
- References
- 100
- Citations by year
- 2026: 43 · 2025: 50 · 2024: 37 · 2023: 37 · 2022: 47 · 2021: 43 · 2020: 34 · 2019: 12 · 2018: 2
- FWCI
- 2.23
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- FEBS Letters (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- National University of Singapore (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Medical Research Council (NMRC/1264/2010/082/12)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Biochemistry › Sulfur Compounds in Biology
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Genomics, phytochemicals, and oxidative stress
- Health Sciences › Nursing › Nutrition and Dietetics › Selenium in Biological Systems
- Keywords
- ergothioneine, dietary antioxidants, tissue accumulation, cytoprotection, antioxidant activity, tissue damage, plasma concentration, disease biomarkers
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Antioxidants, Diet, Ergothioneine, Humans, Neoplasms, Oxidative Stress, Cytoprotection, Neurodegenerative Diseases, Organic Cation Transport Proteins, Symporters
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
