Atlas chapter 24 · Sleep

Poria / Fuling

Wolfiporia hoelen (alternative generic treatment: Pachyma hoelen); historical/applied names Poria cocos, Wolfiporia cocos

E2+ (Poria alone) / E3+ (formula)+ — Supports the tested propositionR1

Proposition / claim: Poria alone: preliminary human sleep improvement, including objective sleep findings (E2+). Formula (Poria + Ziziphus + GABA): sleep benefit (E3+).
Evidence owner: A defined Poria extract for the Poria-alone proposition; a Poria + Ziziphus + GABA formulation for the formula proposition
Dominant uncertainty: Direct Poria-alone causal sleep effect

Organism: Poria / Fuling
Tested intervention: Two distinct evidence-owning interventions: (1) Poria alone — 800 mg nightly of a 75% ethanol Poria extract; (2) Controlled formula — Poria + Ziziphus spinose extract + 100 mg GABA sleep-related drink. These interventions are kept distinct.
Evidence target: DUAL_INTERVENTION: defined Poria-alone extract / multi-component Poria + Ziziphus + GABA formula. A single STANDARDIZED_PREPARATION target would obscure this intervention split, because the dossier contains two materially different evidence-owning interventions.
Intervention description: Poria-alone programme: 21 adults with sleep problems received 800 mg nightly of a 75% ethanol Poria extract. Sleep was assessed using questionnaires and polysomnography. There was no placebo or parallel control group. Formula programme: randomized double-blind placebo-controlled four-week trial of a sleep-related drink containing Poria, Ziziphus spinose extract and 100 mg GABA. The formula is not a Poria-alone intervention.
Population: Poria-alone: 21 adults with sleep problems. Formula: 70 women with poor sleep randomized; 60 included in the published analysis. These populations are not merged.
Comparator: Poria-alone: no placebo or parallel control. Formula: placebo in a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial. The absence of a comparator is the principal causal limitation of the Poria-alone evidence.
Outcome: Poria-alone: total sleep time increased, nocturnal arousal decreased, and subjective sleep measures improved; objective sleep assessment included polysomnography. Because there was no comparator, these findings support a human signal but not a clean causal treatment effect. Formula: greater placebo-relative improvements in sleep outcomes over four weeks, including PSQI and actigraphy-derived sleep duration. The controlled positive result belongs to the complete formula; it is not attributed specifically to Poria, no synergy is demonstrated, and improvement in sleep measures is not established treatment efficacy for diagnosed clinical insomnia.
Evidence maturity (E): E2+ (Poria alone) / E3+ (formula)
Direction: + — Supports the tested proposition
Historical flag (H): Not specified at dossier level
Replication (R): R1
Claim Gap (CG): CG1-2 for cautious Poria sleep language
Evidence Transfer Vector: I / T / O / R / P — for the expanded claim "Poria treats insomnia." I: multi-component formula → Poria alone. T: historically labelled Poria/Fuling → assumed modern identity. O: sleep measures → clinical insomnia treatment. R: single uncontrolled Poria signal + single controlled formula trial → established efficacy. P: study populations → people with diagnosed insomnia generally.
Taxonomic Transfer Confidence: HIGH for authenticated modern W. hoelen; MODERATE-HIGH contextually for historical East Asian Fuling; no automatic transfer from North American W. cocos
Intervention Transfer Confidence: Formula → Poria alone: LOW
Safety: S1-2
Conservation: C0/C+
Resolution zone: RZ-2, with identity authenticated inside the experiment
Next best experiment: Authenticated W. hoelen-alone placebo-controlled sleep trial
Primary references: Kim H, Choi H, Park B-G, Ju H-J, Kim Y-I. Efficacy of Poria Cocos Extract on Sleep Quality Enhancement: A Clinical Perspective with Implications for Functional Foods. Nutrients. 2023;15(19):4242. DOI: 10.3390/nu15194242. PMID: 37836526. PMCID: PMC10574255. ROLE: primary Poria-alone human study; E2+ evidence owner; objective and subjective sleep signal; causal-design boundary. 21 participants analysed; 800 mg/day Poria extract prepared with 75% ethanol taken before bedtime; single-arm pre/post design with no placebo or parallel control. Polysomnography and subjective measures were used. Total sleep time 327.4 to 356.5 min (p=.014); WASO 76.3 to 48.0 min (p=.009); REM 18.44% to 22.05% (p=.005); REM latency 108 to 77 min (p=.004); sleep efficiency did not reach conventional significance (p=.070). Subjective endpoints were not uniformly positive: ISI improved (p=.012) while PSQI was p=.052. Without a concurrent comparator these findings support E2+ but do not establish a causal placebo-relative Poria effect. The study reports the intervention identity as Poria cocos; trial-specific molecular authentication of the clinical material was not established in this audit, and the reported name is not rewritten as Wolfiporia hoelen. Reporting-quality context: the published article contains unusual/inconsistent ethics-reporting language concerning the human clinical component; that inconsistency alone is not used to erase the observed human data or alter E2+.
Hao Y, Song W, Qu L. Effects of a combination of Poria Cocos, Ziziphus spinose, and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) on sleep quality and skin health: A randomized double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trial. Food Science & Nutrition. 2024;12(6):3883-3892. DOI: 10.1002/fsn3.4048. PMID: 38873452. PMCID: PMC11167191. ROLE: primary controlled formula trial; E3+ formula evidence owner; formula-attribution boundary. 70 participants randomized to a multi-component formulation containing Poria plus Ziziphus spinose extract plus 100 mg GABA per daily 10 mL dose over 4 weeks; randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled; sleep assessed by PSQI and wrist actigraphy. The formula produced placebo-relative sleep improvements, supporting E3+ for the complete formula and not E3+ for Poria alone. There was no Poria-only arm and no component-removal design, so Poria cannot be inferred to be essential, principal or independently efficacious, and synergy is not demonstrated. Industry/company affiliations and programme funding are retained as study context, without treating funding source itself as evidence of invalidity.
Wu F, Li S-J, Dong C-H, Dai Y-C, Papp V. The Genus Pachyma (Syn. Wolfiporia) Reinstated and Species Clarification of the Cultivated Medicinal Mushroom "Fuling" in China. Frontiers in Microbiology. 2020;11:590788. DOI: 10.3389/fmicb.2020.590788. PMID: 33424793. PMCID: PMC7793888. ROLE: primary molecular taxonomy; biological-lineage separation; TTC. Examined East Asian Fuling material including sclerotia, commercial cultivation strains and fruiting bodies using morphological examination plus molecular phylogenetic evidence including ITS and multilocus analyses. East Asian medicinal Fuling formed a strongly supported lineage separate from North American Wolfiporia cocos, treated by the authors as Pachyma hoelen. This establishes the biological separation; it does not mean historical material labelled Poria cocos or Wolfiporia cocos can be retrospectively assigned to the East Asian lineage without provenance. Historical interventions are not silently renamed.
Stalpers JA, Redhead SA, May TW, Rossman AY, Crouch JA, Cubeta MA, Dai Y-C, Kirschner R, Langer GJ, Larsson K-H, Mack J, Norvell LL, Oberwinkler F, Papp V, Roberts P, Rajchenberg M, Seifert KA, Thorn RG. Competing sexual-asexual generic names in Agaricomycotina (Basidiomycota) with recommendations for use. IMA Fungus. 2021;12:22. DOI: 10.1186/s43008-021-00061-3. PMID: 34380577. PMCID: PMC8359032. ROLE: primary nomenclature; Wolfiporia generic treatment; modern name crosswalk. The authors evaluated competing sexual/asexual generic names and recommended Wolfiporia for protection/use over Pachyma, establishing the combination Wolfiporia hoelen (Fr.) Y.C. Dai & V. Papp, basionym Pachyma hoelen Fr., MycoBank MB838346. This supports Wolfiporia hoelen as the modern Wolfiporia combination for the East Asian medicinal lineage. It is principally a nomenclatural decision and is not evidence that the underlying East Asian biological lineage changed.
Papp V, Dai Y-C. What is the correct scientific name for "Fuling" medicinal mushroom? Mycology. 2022;13(3):207-211. DOI: 10.1080/21501203.2022.2089755. PMID: 35938080. PMCID: PMC9354628. ROLE: taxonomic synthesis; historical-name crosswalk; TTC context. This review examines the modern taxonomy and nomenclature of medicinal Fuling and concludes that historical use of Poria cocos and Wolfiporia cocos for East Asian medicinal Fuling is misleading in light of modern taxonomic evidence, recommending acceptance of Pachyma hoelen or Wolfiporia hoelen for the East Asian medicinal lineage. It explicitly distinguishes species-level separation of Asian Fuling from North American Tuckahoe from the subsequent question of which competing generic name should be used. Used as synthesis and historical-name crosswalk support only; it does not replace Wu 2020 as primary molecular evidence or Stalpers 2021 as primary nomenclatural evidence.
Source chapter: Chapter 24, The Fungal Evidence Atlas