Immune potentials of the Mucor-fermented Mao-tofu and especially its soluble extracts for the normal mice

Abstract

Mao-tofu was fermented for 6 days with a Mucor strain and extracted with pH 6.5 water and 40% ethanol to generate respective two extracts. Immune potentials of Mao-tofu and two extracts were assessed, via assessing the changes of several immune indices related to immune organs, cells, and molecules in normal mice. Compared with the unfermented tofu, Mao-tofu had somewhat higher immune activities towards the mice in all cases, indicating improved immune potential by the Mucor-mediated fermentation. More important, two extracts (especially water extract) had much higher immune activities towards the mice than Mao-tofu (P