The Effect of Hericium erinaceus as a potential suppressive treatment for Alzheimer’s Disease with Drosophila melanogaster Model of Alzheimer’s Disease

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a chronic neurodegenerative disease that affects over 6 million people in the U.S. AD causes memory loss, decline in cognitive function, and mental disorders, among other things. While there is not an established cure for the disease, research can be done to find possible cures or suppressants. This research does not require actual patients as Drosophila melanogaster, or fruit flies, are great models for AD when they have a certain genetic mutation. The purpose of this study was to see if lion’s mane extract could be successful as a suppressant for AD, modeled by fruit flies. It was hypothesized that fruit flies that are fed lion’s mane mushroom extract would show improvement in cognitive function and mental health, tested with a climbing assay. Flies were transferred to vials with food containing 0 μL, 10 μL, or 30 μL of lion's mane extract. After allowing the flies to feed for 4 days, they were counted to see how many out of the 10-12 flies in each vial were able to climb above 6.5 cm in four seconds. Overall, the hypothesis was true as the 30 μL group did have more flies on average per trial than the climbing assay, compared to the other 2 groups. However, the p-value was less than 0.01. This was shown with the climbing assay which was performed a total of 90 times, 30 times for each sample group.