A person picks a shiittake mushroom in 2018 (AFP / FREDERICK FLORIN)
"Shiitake mushrooms. This must be why I like mushrooms so much," says a January 22, 2025 Facebook post sharing an image with text across it that reads: "Best remedy for HPV."
In another post on TikTok, a user whose account has regularly promoted alternative medical advice claims: "The best remedy if you have HPV is actually medicinal mushrooms." The account links to a website where individuals can purchase medical consultations or buy various supplements.
Several French-language posts also promote "immune-boosting" tablets formulated with AHCC -- a derivative of the shiitake mushroom -- with one user claiming that HPV ruined her life until she discovered natural remedies.
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Screenshot of a Facebook post taken March 18, 2025
The posts are part of a years-long push by wellness influencers to misleadingly promote mushrooms and AHCC supplements for the prevention or treatment of HPV infection.
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Screenshot of a TikTok taken March 18, 2025
Experts told AFP there is no cure for HPV and that supplements are not approved treatments for the virus.
The US Food and Drug Administration has taken action against companies selling AHCC supplements that claim the products are for use in the "cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease" (archived here).
What is HPV?
HPV is a family of viruses "most commonly spread during vaginal or anal sex," according to the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The virus can also be transmitted through "close skin-to-skin touching during sex" (archived here).
While most types of the virus do not cause health problems, some can cause genital warts and cancers. The US National Cancer Institute says there are 12 high-risk HPV types, with HPV16 and HPV18 causing most related cancers (archived here).
Some 84 percent of women and 91 percent of men with at least one opposite-sex partner will be infected with HPV over the course of their lives, according to estimates by the CDC, making it the most common sexually transmitted disease (archived here).
But in nine out of 10 cases, the CDC says the infection will clear on its own within two years without presenting health problems (archived here).
Nicolas Tessandier, a researcher at Montpellier University in France, said questions remain about why the virus is more easily cleared by some (archived here).
"HPV infects cells that then divide. If all the HPV particles are located in a cell that will later die, the infection can disappear like that, simply by chance."
The immune response also "plays a role," Tessandier said. "But there is as yet no therapeutic solution adapted to these discoveries."
Faced with an HPV diagnosis, patients may feel fear and confusion, leading them to turn to social media for apparent answers and remedies.
Jean-Luc Prétet, researcher at the University of Bourgogne Franche-Comté and director of the French National Human Papilloma Reference Center said patients regularly call the center with questions about shiitake, despite little evidence it is effective against HPV (archived here).
"With HPV infections, you have to give it time," he said.
Françoise Salvadori, lecturer in immunology at the University of Bourgogne, agreed (archived here).
"It is completely deceptive to allow people to think they can solve the HPV problem with a few capsules of food supplements," Salvadori told AFP.
AHCC supplements have been shown to decrease the effects of certain medications, including those used to treat breast cancer in older women (archived here).
Shiitake and HPV
A search on PubMed, an online library of scientific studies, does bring up two recent studies looking at AHCC and its impact on persistent HPV infections (archived here and here).
This research was led by Judith Smith, an oncology clinical pharmacy specialist and professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (archived here). Smith also published on the topic in 2014 (archived here).
According to the 2022 study's conflict of interest statement, Smith "was a recipient of various unrestricted research grants supporting preclinical studies on AHCC prior to 2014 from Amino Up, Ltd," a Japanese biotech company that sells the supplement.
The recent studies were both published in the open access journal Frontiers in Oncology.
Many universities maintain lists of recommended academic journals in an effort to protect against predatory publishers. Frontiers in Oncology does not appear on the list maintained by the Faculty of Health at Sorbonne University (archived here).
Montpellier's Tessandier called this a "red flag."
AFP reached out to Smith for comment, but no response was forthcoming.
The independent experts AFP spoke with also raised questions about the studies.
Prétet said the research should have detailed which HPV strains were present in the patients studied.
"Even if the studies found that more women eliminate the virus when treated with the molecule than those who take the placebo, the methodology can be questioned," he said.
"It is not known whether there is an equal distribution of women with and without lesions in the treated and placebo groups," he added. "It is therefore difficult to draw conclusions."
Salvadori said the short period of study and limited number of trial participants make it difficult to generalize from the findings, as well.
Effectiveness of vaccination
The only method to eradicate HPV "remains vaccination," Salvadori said.
The HPV vaccine was first approved in the United States in 2006 for girls and women, with approval for boys and men added in 2011 (archived here and here). The CDC currently recommends that children aged 11 to 12 get the vaccine in order to prevent infections that can lead to cancers later in life (archived here).
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A nurse gives a vaccine against HPV to a girl in Rennes, France in 2023 (AFP / DAMIEN MEYER)
A recent study showed the success of the vaccination, finding that rates of moderate-to-high-risk precancerous lesions related to HPV fell by 80 percent among women aged 20-24 in the United States who were screened for cervical cancer between 2008 and 2022.
Gardasil 9, the HPV vaccine commonly distributed in the United States, cannot protect against all 200 strains of the virus. But according to the CDC, it guards against nine of the most common, including the two strains most likely to lead to cancer (archived here).
HPV vaccines and cervical cancer screenings have made cervical cancer one of the most preventable cancers, the CDC says (archived here).
Around the world, HPV vaccination and cervical cancer screenings have also proved effective, with Australia set to virtually eliminate cervical cancer by 2035 (archived here).
More of AFP's reporting on vaccine misinformation is available here.