ABSTRACT
The health bene˜ts of wolfberry, which have been recorded from the empirical insights of Chinese doctors over hundreds of years, are today perceived by Chinese consumers as centered on age-related conditions, with bene˜ts primarily for eyesight. This public perception is also re©ected in the numerous scienti˜c studies that have been conducted in China in the last 30 years. The earliest work to this effect was published in 1998 by Professor S. Bai of Yinchuan, Ningxia, China, in two books consisting of a total of 462 Chinese research articles on wolfberry. More recent reviews (Gross, Zhang, and Zhang 2006; Sze et al. 2008) discuss the scienti˜c evidence for wolfberry’s bioactivities in the international literature published after the year 2000. Gaps in scienti˜c evidence were identi˜ed, and it was cautioned that no evidence exists “to support claims for a quasi-miraculous potion for longevity” (Potterat and Hamburger 2008, 399). This is particularly true for the rather poorly de˜ned wolfberry fraction of polysaccharides and glycoconjugates often referred to as Lycium barbarum polysaccharide (LBP), which is promoted as a unique bioactive with immuno-modulating, antitumor, and antioxidant activity.
