Researchers at the University of Western Sydney showed that mushrooms lowered blood cholesterol and blood glucose levels while raising the good HDL cholesterol, in the laboratory (Jeong 2010). They thought the effect was possibly due to the influence of chitin and the glucans in mushrooms. Mushrooms have chitin and glucans as part of their cell walls (Wu 2004; Dikeman 2005). Cellulose is normally the main polysaccharide in plant cells walls, but chitin plays a similar role in the button mushroom.